There is a roughly 2 or 3 square mile area that I have not left for the past week. I guess though I did spend last Sunday afternoon in Yanaka. Saturday will be an all day Kamakura visit with 280 9th graders, Sunday will be I don’t know what, and Monday evening will see me in the office of a Japanese camera magazine showing a portfolio.
In exactly one month I will be in a plane a few hours off the coast of Japan headed to Nebraska (not a direct flight) and there is a lot to do before then.
Last year I was given an scabby Olympus OM-1 with a 50mm 1.8 fungus filled lens. There is a little camera repair shop in Kashiwa where I had the insides of it brough back to specs- and then for the outside I ordered a new cover from Aki Asahi.
For 30 years:
And then 5 minutes later:
The cost of such refurbishment (inside and out) made this “free” camera about the same cost as finding a similarly conditioned one at a camera shop here in Japan. I have yet to develop a roll of film from this bugger but the smoky white strands that are all up in the lens elements might make some super soft focus photos, all blurry and dreamy like a holga or lomo. And so they will look like “ART”.
I think I want to be a photography grad student. In Japan. Hopefully at Tokyo Geidai.
But I also really, really like my current teaching job. And I would probably like the job at Senshu University that I have somewhat been offered (to talk about).
I have never really sat down and made a 5 year plan for my life, seeing as how simply getting into a university will do that automatically for you- and then I got here to Japan like I had worked to do and now what? I have a job I love that I walk to every day, it pays better than I deserve and enough to support my other interests. I don’t want to lose this, but there is still a lot more I want to do yet. I went to a international student party at a dorm for international students who go to Tokyo University of Art. It was like the kenshukan at Senshu University, but we all talked about art theory and the music students played piano and traditional chinese instruments. One Korean girl played “The girl from Ipanema” on the piano and then followed that up with the sweetest rendition of Super Mario Brothers theme song (the first two levels). Mike I called you to let you listen through my rad red phone but you were not home. It was awesome.
The other day at a Nikon Gallery photo show (by the lovely Riho Araki) I met an editor of PHaT PHOTO, a photography magazine based here in Tokyo. The magazine is aimed at a hip and graphically literate 15 to 30 crowd, with ads in it for prosumer blah Canon digital Kiss SLRs and also for the Nikon F6. The photography within is usually color, often graphic in a visual sense, and always technically flawless. Have you seen my pictures? They are not like that at all. However I asked Ando san, the editor, if I might be able to stop by with some of my black and white, mish-mash, somewhat sloppy photos and not only was she nice enough to say yes on Saturday, but she actually let me come by and show them to her tonight.
For all the non-scanning and non-posting of the photographs I have not been printing to show you here, I have instead been steadily (in spurts) working on building up a collection of near enough exhibition quality 11×14 sized fiber prints to have on hand. And bring them I did. Perhaps too many.
An hour and a half later (no that’s solid photo showing time since I talked a lot) I was not exactly asked to have a full 8 page spread of my work, but since I did not go in there hoping for that, I did not mind how things turned out at all. I was told that the staff members can’t speak english and wouldn’t it be great if I could maybe teach english conversation classes? and this would be fine with me since the more people I can meet and talk with about photography, the better. That part will work for me and they don’t mind the fact that I won’t charge for casual english conversation classes.
A problem I have now that I have a lot of work, mostly decent, that I like. But should it all be shown at once? I am thinking no. And it needs to be cut down better too. Editing is something I need to work on. “What are you trying to say?” is something I am often asked, and “Interesting” is something else hear a lot, or see written (like in the Document Nippon Competition’s “Try again next time” letter I got a few weeks ago) and I still am not sure how to deal with this yet. I know I am interested in my pictures, and I know I think that the pictures are about photography. I had hoped that the work alone would not need me to verbally back it up but what this means is that this process of learning and working must continue.
Good thing I made a bunch of business cards that say “Photographer” on them today.
