Art and
Research

Fujiko Nakaya is the daughter of the physicist Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-1962). He was engaged in the scientific classification of natural snow crystals and was the first to succeed in making artificial snow crystals. The 1939 film Snow Crystals was his first educational short film. Ten years later, he co-founded Nakaya Laboratory, a small science film studio that would be renamed the following year as Iwanami Productions, when the studio became part of the highly prestigious, and left-leaning, publishing house, Iwanami Shoten. In the exhibition we show a series of documentaries by Iwanami Productions. Ukichiro Nakaya's scientific observations of natural processes have strongly influenced Fujiko Nakaya in her artistic work.