Seeing Double With Fumiko Imano

It’s no coincidence that Imano’s imaginary twin images nod to photos of families and moments of connection, or indeed, that in these scenes she’s actually alone. Born in Japan and raised in Rio de Janeiro until the age of 7, the artist grew up feeling distinctly “other.” “I had to use my imagination to make up stories because I couldn’t be real friends with the other kids in Brazil,” she remembers. “When I moved to a Japanese school, I got bullied. I’ve always had problems with acceptance.” After a pause, she adds, “I’ve always felt alien.” Imano first sought comfort in the nostalgia of family photos when she moved from Brazil back to Japan with her family as a little girl. “I kept looking at the album of Brazil again and again, crying, wanting to go back,” she says. “Since then, I’ve kind of stuck to this. I love the 1970s and 1980s style of family albums, photos taken by my father with children in the middle. Dad would always say, ‘Hey, look at me! Look here.’ That’s why the twins are always looking at the camera.” 

Throughout our call, Imano speaks with a rare openness, often pausing for thought before recounting vulnerable memories and frequently breaking into generous laughter after saying something self-deprecating. Seeking lightness in the humdrum of everyday life, this balance of sincerity and wit has undoubtedly shaped her eccentric twin images, which have been exhibited around the world, published in over 10 monographs, and been the subject of numerous collaborations with magazines and brands, such as Kiko Kostadinov and Marni. Most notably, Jonathan Anderson continues to work with Imano on several projects, including Loewe’s biannual magazine, Publication. Amazingly, little has changed in Imano’s off-the-cuff style since the very first time she conjured her fictional sister. It was 2001 and the artist was living in London, where she studied at Central Saint Martins and London College of Fashion, when she decided to collage two self-portraits to look as if she were eating dinner in bed with an identical twin. It’s an image that radiates with a sense of mischief and naiveté still apparent in her work in 2023—in which the artist uses her doppelganger to inject a surreal kind of humor into ordinary life, lifting herself out of reality and into a parallel world of infinite play. 

Looking back, Imano pinpoints the moment her imaginary twin took on a new, deeper power: after another emotional homecoming to Japan, this time from London at age 27. “I felt really lonely,” she recalls of that period, which sharply mirrored her childhood departure from South America. “I was living in my parents’ house and looking for a job. There was a big gap between this European life and Japanese life. I was fed up with becoming an adult and living properly, trying to earn money and everything.” From then on, Imano found her twin images could offer her levity, even healing, in times of personal struggle and isolation. “I could cheer myself up by making them,” she explains. “Even when I was crying or disappointed and depressed, I tried to smile in the picture. The oddness of it made me laugh. I started making and collecting these images, like catching butterflies and pinning them in boxes.” 

Lensed all over the world—from Reykjavik and LA to Paris and Tokyo—Imano’s extensive archive of images is something to behold. She and her fictitious sister have lived a lifetime of adventures together: playing games on Hollywood Boulevard, eating pizza on the couch, treading white-sand beaches, sharing baths and swimming in blue lagoons. Beyond the strange charm of their ad hoc “family album-style” compositions, more introspective themes are always at play in the artist’s twinscapes, which she has used as a way of navigating the complexities of identity and belonging over the past 22 years. These searching feelings are the reason why, beyond the exposing nature of self-portraiture itself, the artist doesn’t often look back at her early photographs. “It can be really painful to go through my archive,” she says. “There are lots of memories, and now I don’t want to go back to the past.” 

Nevertheless, Imano continues to make new twin works. This past summer, an exhibition at Kosaku Kanechika gallery in Tokyo debuted a series of images the artist shot in Paris during lockdown, portraying Imano and her identical sister quarantining at the storied five-star Le Bristol hotel in 2021. Imano was called to France to shoot a Loewe campaign and decided to capture her days spent isolating in the eerily empty, yet still resolutely romantic, 1920s building. “It was almost like the next day I had to fly there,” she remembers. “I checked my fridge and had lots of vegetables so I gave them to my friends, went to the train and left for three weeks.” Offering a form of companionship in the near-deserted hotel, Imano’s sister setups see the pair lounging in bathrobes, eating lavish room-service meals and roaming the elegant hallways of Le Bristol together. “No cafes or restaurants were open,” she recalls. “It was surreal. It didn’t feel like Paris. I felt isolated, but at the same time, it was kind of fun to be in this situation.”

Shortly after, Imano traveled to Iceland to shoot a subsequent series, which was exhibited at Kosaku Kanechika in 2022. Captured predominantly outdoors in beautiful natural landscapes, it forms a foil to the Paris series, which is lensed in dimly lit, restricted spaces. Both bodies of work, consciously or unconsciously, reflect the universal themes of the COVID years, when freedom, family and escapes to nature took on new meaning for so many. Pertinently, Imano’s twin work has always been about seeking joy in times she has felt the most lost: Wherever she goes, in her twin images at least, she never has to be alone. “I used to take pictures only in my room because I was shy,” the artist says, reflecting on creating her twin scenes around the globe. “But now I feel like new places inspire me. I see myself as a kind of adventurer.”

As she reveals new works to the public, shot two decades after her first portrait in London, Imano concedes that there have been moments she has wanted to separate herself from her twin. “Sometimes I’ve felt like, ‘Oh my god, I want to stop doing this and be normal,’” she admits with a laugh. “I’ve had years of not wanting to make anything.” Surprisingly, given the solitary nature of her work, it was collaborating with others that offered her a form of salvation. In a string of shoots commissioned by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe beginning in 2018, the artist explored a new photographic style that was more sleek and elevated, as opposed to her signature family-photo approach. “I work alone all the time but creating something with others is much more fun,” she says. “In a way, this job stopped me from quitting.”

Connection, it seems, is something that the artist has sought for years through her work, though she’s quite certain she wouldn’t want a twin in real life. “I’d be so annoyed if she was real,” she laughs. “The other day, I was talking to the Kiko Kostadinov [co-creative director] twins, Laura and Deanna Fanning. I love them, they are so sweet, but they talk at the exact same time and laugh at the same time,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s so nice, but I cannot do that.” Happy with her make-believe sister, Imano plans on creating moments of unexpected humor with her imaginary twin for the rest of her life. “I’d like somebody to take a picture of me and my twin in our coffins. I think it would be funny to do that,” she jokes. “I like funny things, and it’s always in my pictures where I feel like funny things live. They make me keep going.”  

Images Courtesy of Fumiko Imano / Artworks for Sale @ Kosaku Kanechika / kosakukanechika.com

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