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“Wunderkammer” is the first photobook by Yumiko Utsu to be released in 14 years, published on the occasion of the group exhibition “Leap Before You Look – Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 20” (Oct. 27, 2023–Jan. 21, 2024) at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

“Wunderkammer” brings together 190 recent works from various different series. In her photography, Yumiko Utsu renders surrealistic, colorful, organic visions from her mind by combining plants, insects, objects and even carcasses into stunning, dynamic works. Though occasionally grotesque, Utsu’s works follow a spirit of wonder and curiosity about the world she inhibits (both external and internal). The title “Wunderkammer” (German for “wonder room”) references the 15th to 18th century tradition of natural history display rooms in which visitors would marvel at collected curiosities.

The book concludes with a statement by Yumiko Utsu and essays by Kyoichi Tsuzuki and Kotaro Iizawa (statement & essays included in Japanese and English).

“My atelier is a little Wunderkammer, or wonder chamber, which I have been building for a quarter of a century. Five hundred books, twenty big plastic storage boxes containing natural objects such as bones, fossils, minerals and nuts, as well as folk crafts, toys, stuffed animals, and figures of miniature people. My Wunderkammer also includes taxidermy animals, plants and insects from gardens, domesticated small creatures and perhaps my own children, too?”
― from Yumiko Utsu’s afterword “Making My Own ‘Wunderkammer’”