Ayano Sudo

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In an interview with The New York Times, Sudo notes that when she was in Paris studying as an exchange student, she saw photographs by a German photographer that claimed to recreate "Harajuku style." But Sudo felt that these images were not representative of the kawaii or Harajuku style, so upon returning to Japan, she began to take self-portraits in various styles, including images that invoked this style that she felt had been misrepresented. She says various Japanese arts, such as Takarazuka Revue and casual Kabuki, where actors take on roles of the opposite gender, inspired her gender-bending photographs. In some of Sudo's works, it is difficult to assign a gender to her photographic subjects. Sudo says she "loves images of androgynes" and that when she was younger, she "wanted to be a boy who wears girl's clothing." These kinds of formative experiences have a significant influence on her various photographic styles. While some of her works are gender-fluid, others invoke dreamlike femininity and are heavily inspired by Japanese kawaii, Lolita, and Harajuku culture. Sudo often heavily retouches her photographs to achieve various visual effects inspired by purikura photo booths. She uses glitter and rhinestones photographs to achieve a glamorizing kawaii effect. In an interview, she defines her concept of kawaii: "I think the meaning of the Japanese word is not limited to 'cute.' Kawaii includes something grotesque, bizarre, weird, creepy, crazy, and beautiful."

In her essay, "Sudo Ayano's Portrait Photography: Artificially Modified Beauties and the Uncanny," Nava Astrachan critically analyzes Sudo's photographic portraits in various sociological, psychoanalytical, and historical contexts. Astrachan first establishes that Sudo's subtle alterations in her portrait photography invoke the unsettling impression of the uncanny for the viewer. Astrachan frames Sudo's photographic alterations in the contemporary context of contemporary Japanese cultures, such as Shojo-manga, purikura, Harajuku-style, and kawaii culture. For Sudo, "the eccentricity that is part of the Kawaii aesthetic is achieved mainly by combining the typically drawn two-dimensional images of shojo-manga with the innate hyperrealism of post-photographic media, namely, Photoshop and other forms of digital manipulation." This effect creates portraits that seem to look artificial and human simultaneously; Astrachan connects this idea to Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud's dispute regarding the uncanny through the analysis of The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman; Mori Masahiro's Uncanny Valley Effect; and Phillip Smith's discussion of the abject and social pollution belonging to a liminal space, expanding on Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Astrachan explains how Sudo's works can be understood to subvert "conventional ideas of beautify and body images" in the changing normative environment regarding cosmetic surgery. Astrachan builds on Mori's technologically oriented Uncanny Valley Effect by framing it within evolving societal norms regarding artificially modified bodies. Astrachan says that although Sudo's works can be understood as a reflection of expanding social norms, they can also be understood as a reflection of "historical-traditional aesthetic ideas regarding the desirability and charm of the female figure" in the context of traditional Kabuki theater like onnagata, and Bunraku puppetry. She argues that in these traditional contexts, there was a "symbolic affiliation of feminine bodily perfection with artificiality." This historical grounding allows Astrachan to discuss how Sudo's portraits contribute to the "noticeable tendency of the contemporary fashion industry and prominent Japanese theatrical and visual traditions… to blue gender boundaries and emphasize gender ambiguity."

Sudo's work is held in the following permanent collections: • Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo • George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York