don't look at me

it's impossible NOT to look at kimiko yoshida's series of slick, highly stylized self portraits, even though her current solo show at the maison europeene de la photographie in paris is entitled,'there where i am not.'
yoshida is a japanese born, paris based artist who uses herself as the subject matter to explore the themes of disappearance, transformation, gender and heredity all wrapped up beautifully in her fashion editorial worthy imagery, outfitted by one mr. paco robanne. her immaculately styled photographs from her most recent series, "painting. self-portrait" draws inspiration from historical costume and the classical works of picasso, matisse, rembrandt, rubens, delacroix, watteau, among others. however yoshida's trademark restrained monochrome colour palette and use of everyday found objects as props and costume is uniquely her own.
below are a FEW selects from her archive of over 82 portraits in the collection:








photos from 2002:



i have yet to comb through all her images in her archive... i'm kind of relishing the opportunity to do so on a rainy day when i can carefully absorb each meticulous detail in every single one of her works and ooh and ahh over them respectively ^.^