Asako Narahashi

Kawaguchiko, 2003. All images courtesy of the Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

“I often have both feelings—‘good’ and ‘bad’—about a certain thing or subject,” writes photographer Asako Narahashi, emailing from her home in Tokyo.

“I am quite a perverse person, so I cannot accept my good feelings gratefully. When I feel good, I wonder whether it is right or not. When I feel bad, I try to find a way to make it better.”

Yunohama, 2004

This middling perspective —Narahashi calls it “way of seeing”—becomes more obvious when you see the duality of her recent photo series, half awake and half asleep in the water: In them, Narahashi wades out into sea at several coastal points in Japan, using an underwater camera (and impeccable timing) to capture waves hitting the lens. The resulting photographs blend the viewer’s sense of where land, sea, and sky meet, causing beautifully eerie feelings of drowning, suffocation, and isolation. 

That sense of uncertainty is a big part of Narahashi’s work, and she leaves much of the creative process to chance. “I often lose my sense of direction in the sea,” Narahashi says. “Shooting in these surroundings, it is rather difficult to take photographs of what I am aiming for. I have no pre-planned images in my mind before shooting. I’m philosophical about what’s going on there, just taking photographs without making a fuss.”

Jonanjima, 2002

Narahashi began studying photography more than 20 years ago, attending Daido Moriyama’s photo session workshops. After career stints owning a gallery and magazine, Narahashi published “half awake” in 2003—and though she says the series is still ongoing, it’s already garnered her much attention stateside. half awake showed as part of a Japanese group show at the International Center of Photography, and in the summer of 2008, Narahashi celebrated her first solo show in the United States at New York City’s Yossi Milo Gallery.

And though “half awake” is taking off, Narahashi’s already looking for other ways to explore isolation within nature. “One [upcoming series] is ‘I Wish You Were Here.’ These are landscape photographs, but you don’t see the person one hopes to be there,” she explains. “It is a landscape of absence, in a way.”