The Japanese designer Kenya Hara has intensively explored a topic that most people find uninteresting: cleaning, cleaning and cleaning. With hundreds of photos, he proves that "cleaning" is an essential part of human culture!
To back up his thesis, Kenya Hara, who is one of the world's leading representatives of his profession, has compiled a small, thick book in which he and his team examine the various aspects of cleaning. The head designer of the world-famous Muji brand sees the act of cleaning as a crucial difference to nature. "Humans are living beings who are constantly cleaning themselves and their surroundings. Cleaning creates a balance between nature and what humans have created."
"Cleaning" sharpens the focus, not least by carefully organizing the different forms of cleaning. Kenya Hara divides the procedures into no fewer than 16 picture chapters, and the viewer is amazed at the variety of the designs as well as the richness of the terms: Sweeping, dusting, blowing, beating, washing, wiping, smoothing, raking, brushing, cleaning, scrubbing, scraping, erasing, shoveling, removing, erasing are impressively presented.
Naturally, the designer draws some of the typical tools with a fine line at the start of each chapter, and as a little extra, there are also illustrations of three typical local peddlers selling brooms (Japan), sponges (Greece) and a whole range of cleaning tools (Thailand).
"In 2019, we traveled the world and photographed people cleaning. That was a time before COVID-19 'swept' the globe. We had wondered whether the essence of humanity might lie dormant in our everyday and normal cleaning activities, which exist across cultures and civilizations. When the whole world seemed to stand still, these photos and videos made us miss our ordinary routines." (Hara)
It is not only spectacular cleaning procedures, such as the cleaning of entire ships and airplanes or the annual ritual cleaning of a 15-metre-high Buddha statue.
It is precisely the moments of seemingly simple, everyday cleaning that must make the viewer think. Whether it is a simple sweeping up in front of a store door or just wiping the table top after a meal, even the image of a banal garbage trolley or the still life of cleaning utensils take on a fascinating meaning in this context and lend a new significance to cleaning.
Text: Herbert Lechner
Cleaning
Kenya Hara (ed.)
Lars Müller Publisher
11.8 × 16 cm, 504 pages, paperback, text in English
2023, 978-3-03778-732-8
30,- SFr.
