is a Japanese photographer, born in 1972. She discovered photography whilst studying at Seian Junior College of Art and Design. In contrast to traditional art, photography was a simpler way to approach the real world for her and at the same time a way to lift up and underline the life’s complex sides. She worked three years for others before she started as a free lance and she is now working on her own projects at the same time. 
In the beginning of her career she took pictures mostly of flowers and animals and she took huge amounts of them. This was an helpful method for her to develop as a photographer. It made her understand every moment better, gave her insight into a specific moment and she understood that every one of them had something to explain.
In our everyday life we move around and take part in different spaces, often in a big hurry. What if we had stopped sometimes and let Rinko’s approach to photography “teach us” how to relate to a place. Rinko’s way to approach photography was obviously not that critical in the beginning, and we are maybe not that critical to a new place at the first either. But as the time is passing by we will zoom in and start to understand that the small pieces and the small differences count. Rinko is known for capturing ordinary moments which are often ignored. What would happen if we took a breathing pause in a route we are familiar with, and looked at certain points from various angles? I have a feeling that this would make us understand a space and it’s surrounding in a different way, and maybe we would also change thoughts from time to time.
“Cui cui” is a project she finished in 2005 and is an intimate insight into Kawauchi`s own family, portraying them in their daily rituals and major events such as birth and death. The series is taken over 12 years, where the joy and tragedy of the human condition is the story she takes us trough. The title ”Cui cui” comes from a bird’s song, and means the individual fragility. Rinko takes spellbinding pictures which focus on one specific moment. This is a manifestation about the life which is closing out everything else around. The project “Cui cui” had to be more than a personal family album for her. She wanted to make a book that would bring people to think about their own family relationships and their own life. Through that work I’m sure she perceives her family in a different way than before. We don’t know the built space surrounding us only at a glance, but we’re building up a relationship to it over time.
For Rinko, the image and the inspiration are just coming. Rinko often has a potential book in mind; it could be a feeling or a specific space. We can choose what kind of built space we want to look at, be surrounded by and live in. Speaking for myself I’m not often taking a route on impulse if I know the way from A to B before I start. If we were more open minded and curious, our daily mood could lead us through new routes and new spaces in the city. This could be a personal project to develop the thoughts we have about the city and its spaces, and let us get to know it in a different way. Moving around in the city, focus points, contrasts, compositions, scale variations and so on are all important factors that make us change direction, viewing points and route. These factors are also important for how the eye moves around in Rinko’s pictures.
“Cui cui`s ” starting point is the human being and the time. Not only the time it takes to capture a picture, but also the importance of time in life, the cycle of time. The project takes us through the life’s changes, from the organic life, as vegetables and flowers to the landscape and the human life. A seed needs water, sun and thoughtfulness to grow up and survive. A human life needs the same. All the living beings have to adapt to new situations during their life. Flowers grow up, they are cut off, points are set and new steps and lives are taken.
Total concentration while she is working is another relevant aspect for Rinko, but as she says “For a photographer, it’s a necessity that you can shoot stuff magically, accidents are necessary”. She loves to discover something extraordinary in her prints while developing. One can’t discover everything in the three dimensional world where something new always happens within, but small breathing brakes, shifting in viewing point and coincidences can result in discovering new things around us. 
It’s important for Rinko to make personal pictures. The color used in her pictures is often in pastel and soft tones. They are clear, clean and have often a whitish light. She has a unique way of capturing light in her prints and therefore soul and the aura of the subject rather than the subject itself. The editing process is of major importance as well. She is adding relatively simple manipulations she is adding, only to lift up the central aspects in order to make the communication more clear.
Putting her pictures together is as important as the shooting process to her. She looks at her pictures objectively and calm down more at this stage. She is afraid to think too much about the selection of pictures and how they should be put together, because she doesn’t want the result to be over structured and artificially composed. The process makes her think about them in a new way, and she discovers new aspects. It makes me think how we can get closer to the environment around us. The world changes, the city expands, and the buildings get taller. How can the environment become more personal for us when it’s changing and growing every day? We can’t change a color from a building nor change the height or move them around as we would like them. But we can get to know them as they are, try to feel them, and slightly feel that they’re becoming more personal, we can change them in our heads.
Rinko has a fantastic capacity of making books, documenting her work and give them out in collections. She published her first books in 2001, called “Hanabi”, “Utatane” and “Hanako”. She has later published “Aila” in 2004, “Cui cui” in 2005 and “The eyes the ears” in the same year. The Japanese photographic world has always been dominated by books because of a lack of galleries. In such a situation the photographers have to publish their single projects more often, which is a very different practice than in America and Europe. A photography book can be held in your hands and appreciated on a more intimate level. You can hold a book, put it away and look at it again. When you are putting together a photography book, you must keep in mind that it’s going to be seen in a sequential way as you turn the pages. In Japan, people rather buy a book than go to an exhibition. Rinko wants us to feel closeness to her art, to feel it personal on our body, and to let it be an inspiration and influence. Exhibitions are seen in enclosed spaces, “white boxes” as she would qualify them. When viewing an exhibition, what counts most is the space and how it is structured. She likes to show her pictures in small rooms, so the viewers get close to her work. To transform those thoughts to the built space one could say that we can’t build wide spaces with a lot of air, but on the other hand she is engaged to the thoughts that the surroundings needs to be personal.
To investigate the environment we move through every day, hunting against experience and explore new spaces is something we should think more about. We can learn from Rinko and her way of working with photography. The way she wants us to explore her art, to be curious about it and how we get to know it can be adapted to how we relate to our surroundings. To go deep into a small area, piece by piece, and puzzle it together in our heads afterwards can give areas without any value in the beginning a new significance, build up on experience and curiosity, experimenting and searching. We will feel more familiar with the built space we are surrounded by, and the surroundings will probably feel smaller and more personal. After a while it is not the built space which first of all is the ruler and makes a distance, but every curious human being moving through and approaching the continuous built space will feel closer. 