The Vital Materialities of Hiroko Komatsu’s Photography

This paper will introduce the work of Hiroko Komatsu, including her award-winning large-scale gallery installations and hand-made photobooks. Drawing on artist talks, interviews, and a delineation of the evolution of her work, this paper will provide a much-needed overview of one of Japan’s most provocative contemporary artists actively engaged in the expansion of photography’s critical modalities. I explore how Komatsu’s work offers a vital set of perspectives on a complex matrix of materialities, mediating relations, and metabolic processes informed by the aftermath of the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear reactor meltdown disaster and an intensive regime of urban rebuilding spurred on by the preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. In so doing, I will delineate how Komatsu’s work invites us to consider photography’s manifold contributions to ongoing developments of materialist and ecocritical discourses on the agency of nonhuman and urban materialities.