The McDonalds ads for the shrimp Ebi filet have been all around recently, for a while actually, but it was just yesterday I noticed something about one of their posters. The graphic designer cleverly lined up the burger bun with the model bun and so they make the same sort of shape together. The “hippu” line continues on from her waist to where she seems to be sitting.
I took a women studies class my last semester at UNL and we had to watch this agonizingly paranoid video of some speaker at a lecture about women’s representations in modern advertising. The speaker no doubt was probably also one of those people upset with Nike about one of their commercials, because images are the same as Real Things. However the implications in the arrangement of a food item and the anatomy of a model (whose last name is Ebi-something) are interesting and probably intentional, be it for the sake of design or to capitalize on some hidden desires.
Then again there was a slight mis-alignment in another poster I saw later that day. But(t) you get the point, in the end.
At a KFC in Ueno I saw this photograph decorating a wall, and again depending on your mindset, the implications or message here could be whatever you want to imagine.
My friend Atsuko is having a photograph exhibition at the Up Field Gallery near the JR Suidobashi station here in Tokyo. If you get a chance, you ought to stop by and see some well done photographs.
My leica is getting repaired because the shutter dial seems to be a little off. The light meter activates even on the B (off) setting and never on 1/1000. Here is, for no reason other than because I am bored, a MS paint drawing of my camera.
Not the romantic type- more about some abstract feeling of which I can’t think of a good word for at this moment. But why talk when you can show a picture instead?
I have been often thinking (and often shooting) about the issues of photogenic-ness. In many cases, I am very good with portraits. Dare I say I could make anyone look good in a photograph. Good to me at least. With my teacher above, there is about 7 years worth of friendship and experiences between us. She is the only other person whom I have and can refer to as my “mom”. Does personal indebtedness come through in these pictures? Do things like that matter in a photograph? They do in a human relationship.
Sometimes I think that the act of photographing is an act of communication between myself and someone else- the photograph then becomes simply a byproduct of that moment.
