Love Songs — First Light 始まりの光

Love Songs — First Light by RongRong & inri is an extraordinarily intimate photobook that transforms love, distance, and communication into a shared photographic language. Gathering the couple’s earliest “photographic letters” exchanged between 1999 and 2000, the book traces the beginning of both a romantic relationship and one of contemporary photography’s most significant artistic collaborations.

Created during a time when the two artists shared no common spoken language, these handmade black-and-white photographs became a way of communicating beyond words. Through handwritten texts, performative gestures, portraiture, and acts of longing, RongRong and inri constructed a visual correspondence that feels deeply personal yet universally resonant. The result is neither documentary nor fiction, but something far more fragile and sincere photography as intimacy itself.

What makes Love Songs — First Light especially powerful is its emotional honesty. These images were never originally intended for public viewing; they existed first as private exchanges between lovers separated across China and Japan. Yet within that vulnerability lies the strength of the work. The photographs resist spectacle and sentimentality, instead offering quiet reflections on closeness, absence, tenderness, and mutual becoming.

For collectors of contemporary Asian photography and photobooks exploring relationships, collaboration, and the emotional possibilities of the photographic medium, this publication is a rare and important work. It not only documents the early stages of RongRong & inri’s partnership, but also captures the moment when two individual artistic practices gradually merged into a singular creative identity.

More than a love story, Love Songs — First Light is a meditation on photography itself on its ability to bridge distance, carry emotion, and create connection where language falls short. It is a photobook that rewards slow reading, intimate attention, and repeated return.

《Love Songs — First Light》收錄了攝影雙人組 RongRong&inri 於 1999 至 2000 年間交換的早期「攝影書信」，是一部關於愛、距離與攝影語言的動人作品。當時的兩人無法以共同語言溝通，於是透過照片、手寫文字與身體表演，建立起一種超越語言的親密交流。

這些原本只屬於戀人之間的私人影像，後來成為兩人共同創作生涯的起點。書中既有思念與等待，也有希望與陪伴，呈現出攝影作為情感媒介最真誠而脆弱的一面。

不同於一般關於愛情的影像作品，《Love Songs — First Light》沒有刻意的浪漫化，而是以極為真實與克制的方式，讓觀看者感受到關係中的親密、孤獨與連結。對於關注亞洲當代攝影、攝影書文化，以及影像如何承載情感與記憶的讀者而言，這是極具收藏價值的重要作品。

Language: English, Japanese & Chinese
Format: Softcover | 104 pages
Dimensions: 240 x 240mm | 350g
Publication Year: April 2026 | First Edition
ISBN: 978-4-86541-227-7