Enokura Koji

Japanese, 1942–1995

BiographyBorn November 28, 1942 in Tokyo. Died 1995.

(DRAFT, 2013)
As a founding member of Mono-ha, literally "school of things," Enokura Koji’s artwork exposed the raw materiality of the cloth, concrete, paper, and other materials in relationship with the artist’s body and the spaces where the artworks were sited. In 1971, Enokura was given an award at the Paris Biennial, where he poured a three meter high concrete wall between two trees that were about five meters apart giving substance to an otherwise invisible space. The award allowed him to live and work in Paris from 1973-1974, soon after he first began taking photographs. Interested in what the artist calls a “frightening unease” between a body and the space around it, Enokura considered the camera an optical instrument that could intervene between an object and himself. He also sought to free the camera’s viewfinder from the human eye and often inserted himself in timed exposures or in the role of printing rather than framing photographs.

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