From this Friday noon(?) to Sunday evening I will be in Kyoto. I have not been there since 2001
and that was only for half a day.
Since I don’t own a guidebook of any sort, my trip planning is of the “Find something when I get there” variety. But it’s not like I am going there to see anything in particular except hopefully some friends. And some of those temples I hear they have. Something about Kinkakuji Temple… man I don’t really care if I see it or not but at the same time there is this perverse attraction to go just to take THE PICTURE that seems to be required by tourist law.
I’ll do that, but get like someone’s head at the bottom of the frame or a railing or something. No no I know what to do– something like what I did in Kamakura in June:
8/1
Got my ticket (27,ooo yen) and now the fun part- what cameras to take? The Pentax 67 needs to be taken. Thinking a 40mm for the Leica too.
Don’t know why I did not get it sooner, but there was something disturbing (just dumb?) about my visit to the Ginza Leica shop on Saturday. The store design is great- looks like the kind of place you might see profiled in the magazine Surface. And of course what they carry, luxury hand-made eye wateringly expensive German cameras, are beautiful. The staff that I talked to were reserved but not stuck up and friendly enough. Actually it was the clerk (Personal Shopping assistant?) who was about my age that gave me a brochure explaining the photo exhibition that was upstairs in the Leica Gallery. The previous Leica Gallery was a large square room with white walls and a wood floor. A classic kind of Photo Gallery. The new one is much more cramped and has tables for looking through a photo book collection that is avalible for viewing.
The problem that arises is the same that you might have in coffee shops that also want to try to show art- you can’t get close enough to the work without putting your lower midsection near someone’s head. I don’t like that when I am the one sitting and so you just kind of have to keep your distance. The work shown were less than a dozen photographs by Sebastiao Salgado. Like the photos he is famous for, they were of poor people doing poor, difficult work in biblically epic and beautifuly made photographs. I like Salgado’s work, and it is important. But my how the context changes when it is shown in the new gallery. Downstairs you can special order your M7 with black paint and silver controls and hey go crazy, for an extra 200 bucks get that ostrich leather and for a few hundred more get the matching ever-ready case. Need a lens? A new 28mm will run you another 2 grand at least.
What kind of pictures can be taken with a Leica? Go on upstairs and see.
Wow look at the tones and detail and resolution in Salgado’s prints. Look how hard those people are working. All those brown people really have poor lives. Well, I think I will hit starbucks down the street and then go with my wife to the Vuitton shop for a new purse.
What I am trying to say is that while as strong as Salgado’s work is, it is difficult for it to compete with a several million dollar 3D commercial while it is hung in a wide hallway that leads to the repair counter. Those laboring Indians in stip mines become these little salesmen for a camera company.
Either that or Salgado and Leica really wanted to do a mind-blowing post-moderninst photography exhibition.
***************************
Re-reading that, it I noticed how strange it is of me to all of the sudden start being concerned over the ethics of the pictures and context that I was describing, since I usually interpret photographs based on photo-form, AND that my first exhibition here in Tokyo was at the Nikon salon…
1. Frisk Mints
One gives you dangerously fresh breath. Two make your eyes water.
The three in my hand there just might kill a man.
I’ve not the will to try more than 2 at once, so who knows what will happen.
2. Haircut
Thanks Yoshie.
3. Pentax 67 55mm f4 Lens Hood
I am a firm proponent of lens hoods. They protect the lens from knocks by taking the blow. This one is made of plastic and clips on like a lens cap. But unlike a lens cap it is empty inside… kind of like single guys in camera shops on a Friday evening.
4. Jurassic-5: Feedback
No Cut Chemist? It is still pretty good but Oh I know what you will hear out of Jeeps on Greek Row this fall.
5. Suntory Oolong Tea (2L)
After 8 years of being in and out of Japan I finally came to like tea this spring. Oolong from Suntory is awesome. “For a relaxing time…”
I went to the Leica shop in Ginza today and it is a damn fine place. Everyone (except me) was dressed sharp and a year’s salary would still only get you (me) out the door with fewer cameras than I have fingers on one hand. Sure they have the Hermes Leica MP for 12 grand, and even if the Al La Carte leicas there had blue ostrich leather, not one of the cameras I saw had a Clay Smith Cams Mr. Horsepower sticker on it. I guess money can’t buy taste (red leather on a Black Paint M7 ?), but a few hundred yen will get you a snazzy sticker at Moon Eyes in Yokohama.
