Mika Horie

Mika Horie was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1984. Her interest in photography and Japanese paper-making began during her Bachelor studies at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. After graduating she worked as a freelance photographer and in 2008 she spent one year in the United Kingdom for a MA European Arts Practice (Fine Art) at Kingston University in London. In 2013 she established her own studio space in Kaga-city and after an apprenticeship with a traditional papermaker in Shiga, she started to pursue the primitive passions and aesthetic values of Japanese paper and cyanotype (blue) photography. Horie’s art works are fully handmade. The paper is made by her from local, organic and high quality raw materials. Her photographic process is nearly as laborious as the paper making. She hauls a vintage 8 by 10 inch camera into the hills where she harvests the gampi for her paper, capturing mountainscapes, foliage, and nearly-forgotten villages. She treats her paper with iron salts, places the oversize negatives directly on top, and allows the sun to expose them to shades of cyan and deep indigo. Horie has exhibited her work several times within Japan and in the United Kingdom.