TOKYO RUMANDO: I’m Only Happy When I’m Naked

Born in Tokyo in 1980, Tokyo Rumando cut her teeth as a model doing shoots for various movies and magazines. In this time, she notably posed for both Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. In 2005, drawing on her experience as the subject of the lens, she took up photography herself and began experimenting with the medium. Entirely self-taught, her works primarily consist of self-nude portraits and examinations of Rakugo (a performative form of Japanese story telling) artists. In doing so, she explores the line between photography and performance and often confronts the nature of gender and sex through her works.

In Rumando’s debut work, “REST 3000~ STAY 5000~,” she visited more than 20 love hotels from Shinjuku to Yoshiwara (the Edo period’s mostly faded red light district) and explored their cultural importance through the medium of self-portraiture. In doing so, she deftly exposed a hidden and intimate facet of Japanese life while examining her own sense of self and sexuality.

Rumando has only grown as an artist in the last few years and her more recent exhibition, “The Story of S,” proves this. Branching out from standard self-portraiture, she combines an element of theatre into her work. The incorporation of masks and staging similar to traditional Japanese theatre transforms her work from a simple story into a complex play.

In the traditionally male dominated world of Japanese photography, Tokyo Rumando is consistently being recognized for her talent and unique approaches to photography. By removing her own body from the subject of others’ lenses and exploring it confidently in front of the audience’s gaze, each of her works also contributes to a growing sense of female empowerment within the photographic industry.

Tokyo Rumando presents an exciting, younger artist who is still able to maintain a strong connection to traditional Japanese photographer and culture trough her works. Anyone should be looking out with a keen eye for her next exhibition.