Michiko Kasahara
Born in Nagano, Michiko obtained a BA in Sociology at Meiji Gakuin University, Japan in 1983, and an MA in Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, U.S.A, in 1987. She was curator of Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography from 1989 to 2002, and since 2002 has been curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. She is also an instructor at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics.
Selected exhibitions (curatorial works):
American Documents in the fringe, 1991
Exploring the Unknown Self - Self-portraits of Contemporary Women, 1991
Critical Landscape, 1993
Border/ Borderless, Japanese Contemporary Photography, 1993
Gender Beyond Memory, The Works of Contemporary Women Artists, 1996
Alfred Stieglitz and his Contemporaries, 1997
Love's Body ? Rethinking the Naked and the Nude in Photography, 1998
American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, 2000
Kiss in the Dark: Contemporary Japanese Photography, 2001
Out of the ordinary/extraordinary: Japanese contemporary photography, Japan Foundation, 2003
Urban relationship, sustainable as a guest curator as part of “2003 City_net Asia” project, the Seoul Museum of Art, 2003
MOT annual 2005: Life Actually, the works of contemporary Japanese women, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2005
Selected Works:
The Politics Behind the Nude, Chikuma Shobo, Tokyo, 1998
Photography As a Bulwark Against Era, Seikyu-sha, Tokyo, 2002
Photographs of the war, its history and meaning; The Politics Behind the War, Seikyu-sha, Tokyo, 2004
Awards:
Award of excellence for the essay "How HIV changes photography and art. Section 1 Case Study: Nicholas Nixon", Kashima Art Foundation, 2001
Catalogue Award for the essay on "American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection" catalogue, The Japan Association of Art Museums, 2001
The Photographic Society of Japan Award, 2002
