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Kyoto Stillness: The Photography of John Einarsen

Photo by John Einarsen

Meditate on the natural and man-made beauty of Kyoto, with a series of black and white photographs by John Einarsen. Experience Kyoto stillness through his eight prints, displayed on handmade Awagami washi paper, through September 3.

An American writer, editor, and photographer, Einarsen has lived in Kyoto for more than 30 years, and has immersed himself in the art and culture of  the ancient imperial capital.

Photo by Mitsue Nagasu

Einarsen publishes the Kyoto Journal, an award-winning, non-profit volunteer-based magazine established in 1986. Now the longest-established independent English publication in Japan, Kyoto Journal has earned several international independent press awards, including the Utne Reader and Pushcart Prize. In 2013, Einarsen received the Japanese Cultural Affairs Agency Award for the Journal’s long-term efforts to introduce Kyoto and Japanese culture to the English-speaking world.

The eight works selected reflect the antiquity of Kyoto and its environs even as they evoke transformation.

Photo by Micah Gampel

Presented to complement these images are the poems of Edith Shiffert, an American poet who called Kyoto home for more than fifty years. The eight works selected here reflect the antiquity of Kyoto and its environs even as they evoke transformation, both personal and cosmological, wrought by the forces of nature and time. Edith passed away in Kyoto in 2017, at the age of 101.