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Some students kept asking for print club photos of me but they did not think that these were as funny as I did.

If you got through the crap that was the previous post, then please go on to something better.

Justin has updated and changed his page again. And what’s more, he has been posting photographs online.

Osaka can be an expensive, but fun day trip from Tokyo via the bullet train. I learned this on Saturday when I went down to check out the Osaka exhibition of my Nebraska photographs. The room was just about the size of the Shinjuku gallery when there is no main divider seperating the two gallery spaces, and there were three other photographers exhibiting prints with me. Unlike the Shinjuku exhibition, my photographs this time were shown in two rows. This presented a challenge in the arrangement, since the photos not only had to relate to the next photo in line, but with the one below (or above it) and alsowith one across and the one one diagonally up or down. Since I could not be there to set up the show I sent along a fold-out map of sorts, a mock up of the show using small 2 inch wide black and white photocopies of my pictures.

Saturday was the Osaka Portfolio Review day and one of my very favorite photographers, Hiromi Tsuchida was there to look at work . He spent some time to go over the Nebraska photos with me and suggested that I try to change the perspective from how I shoot. Now, he is about 5′2″ and I am 6′5″ so naturally our ideas and habits about shooting might look different but he had a good point.
The photos that other people brought in spoke of different attempts to understand or at least use the medium of photography. Some were the standard, “The Picture is the Same as the Real Thing” kind of idea, while others used the descriptive powers of their camera and film to demonstrate how a photograph changes reality instead of refining it. Of the photos I saw the one set that sticks in my mind the most as I write this was a series of photos taken from train door windows, all with the same basic frame of the door in the frame of the photograph, but with something different out the window in each picture.
The approach seems as simple as it probably sounds, but with clever editing and a good eye the photos could work out to be something more complicated than the premise. That to me I guess is an underlying goal of all good photography. To think that the Nebraska photos are just pictures of Nebraska would be to miss a lot of the point. But what’s the point? That’s something that will be different for you and me.

So now I am at a new era? point? aspect? of the Photographic and Artistic development process. The Nikon Salon experience is over, and so no more chances to mention that I will be having a photo show at an already decided point in time. By this I mean that I will have another exhibition in 2006, but I am not sure exactly when, or even what work I will show. The space is a gallery in Shimbashi that a friend’s family owns. I still have the magazine to look forwards to on the 20th, but I still need to continue working to keep up the momentum of the exposure of my photography.
I have gotten more recognition than I probably deserve but not near as much as I think I want.

What’s left is work.

I am still going to print out my portfolio this winter and see if I can’t get in Nippon Photo or some other publication. I should get a flash site up but that’s something I don’t know how to get going, and my lack of interest in investing the proper time to learn how to work well with photographs on a computer does not help.

For those of you who came to Osaka to see my show, Thank You Very Much.