Shinjuku - Yotsuya Photo Gallery walk
This being Fall break, I had some time yesterday to go in to town and check out some photo galleries. It was around the 6th venue of the day when I found a recently published map of the galleries in and around Shinjuku and Yotsuya.
Click on the picture for a 1000px wide version:
Yesterday I stopped by:
Konica Minolta Plaza
Nikon Salon
Epson Imaging Gallery epSITE
Pentax Forum
This was a baaaad idea because if Camera Lust was an actual physical ailment I would be needing some intensive surgery to get rid of this desire for a Pentax 67II, just like the one they have in their showroom for anyone to pick up and get infected with.
Place M
Roonee
Gallery Niepce (they were closed)
Lotus Root Gallery
I had not been to the Lotus Root Gallery before, but it is going to be one of my stops from here on out. It’s located very close to Roonee, but easy to miss if you don’t know what you are looking for. Here is a map and a photo to help:
From Yotsuya I took some back roads and wormed my way towards Aoyama and then into the quiet back streets of Omotesando. It took about half an hour and the non-help of three people on the streets, but I finally found Musee F. This is one of the nicer looking galleries in Tokyo but you will need a map to find it. And you’ll also need a lack of hesitation to go into what looks like an expensive condo’s stairwell to find that it also doubles as a staircase into the basement gallery lobby.
Overall, I saw some good work (at Nikon and Lotus Root, and to an extent at Musee F) and there were some photographs that really were not the kind that interest me (Panned motorcycles going fast at Konica Minolta, and the “On-The-Set/Behind the scenes” photos of Japanese film directors at Place M). Format-wise, there was nothing that I saw that was done with 35mm film, instead all the film photos were shot with 645, a 6×7, or with a 4×5. Work digitally captured looked indeed like it had been captured digitally (1/2 the Nikon Salon and all of the pics at Konica Minolta). While the 4×5 photos from epSITE and Musee F were printed digitally, they lacked the sharp edges and that creepy dryness of work done with a DSLR. I did not list it above because it is not actually a gallery, but I did stop in the Canon showroom (next to Pentax and Epson) too. I felt my stomach churn after seeing the example A4 color prints that came out of their Bang Dang Doodle shiny new printers. It’s like someone took the most contrived and color saturated example pictures from a lens catalogue, and then bumped up the Sharpness Filter in Photoshop 200%. (This inflamed my Pentax 67II desire something fierce. (Yes, I know my regular Pentax 67 is probably good enough but I’ll leave this for another post))
So, in conculsion: I love living in Tokyo for days like yesterday. And the weather was perfect too.
i do wonder if anybody still loves 35mm. i’m submitting for some group exhibition here in perth at the end of the year (nothing big, anyone can have a picture displayed), and they all seem to be dslr, except for me and the half frame pictures i submitted. ha!
Comment by rachael — 9/27/2007 @ 11:07 pm
I love it! And I’ll keep shooting it as long as either it or I am still around.
I just can’t wrap my head around the whole concept of Newer is Better (let’s ignore the Pentax parts of this post). I swear that a Canonet is more than enough camera for “good pictures” (whatever they are) for the average person (whoever they are). An Olympus Miu is even better.
Before our trip to America, I have a project in my English classes where students bring in 10 photographs about their life that they will take to share with their host families. It is interesting to compare the film prints from when they were babies to their digital prints from 2000 (all green and faded) and the more recent digital prints from the past year (that creepy dry air again). Not that the Creepy Dry Air look can’t be used as a tool to make a photograph…
Comment by John — 9/27/2007 @ 11:19 pm
Creepy Dry Air look is an interesting idea. Can you explain it?
Comment by Nick — 9/28/2007 @ 6:54 pm
If you choose to upgrade your Pentax I’m more than interested in providing a safe home for your ‘regular’ one. Take a look at Mr Puu’s latest offering and you’ll see why… http://puu.luck.jp/gr104/gr104.html
Comment by akikana — 9/28/2007 @ 9:47 pm
What do you mean by ‘creepy dryness’?
Comment by Mark James Adams — 9/28/2007 @ 10:26 pm
Creepy Dryness is most apparent in digital prints of photographs taken with digital cameras. Next time you are at Yodobashi check out the printers and the example/sample print portfolios to see just what I mean. Dry dead pixels, ultra sharpness that looks much different from the resolution and feel of photographs made from film based “capture” (god I hate that word in regards to photography). Digital can’t show humidity. (more tomorrow)
Comment by John — 9/28/2007 @ 11:45 pm
looking forward to it!
Comment by Nick — 9/29/2007 @ 9:30 am
Guy, I’m pretty serious about it (going to keep the 55mm lens though). We ought to meet up sometime or go on a shoot-along walk together where you can borrow the camera and shoot a few rolls of film. I have a 105mm lens I would let got with the 67 body.
Comment by John — 9/29/2007 @ 10:10 am
thanks for the map…..Rat Hole Gallery has a nice Anders Petersen show on at the moment….
Fancy a coffee one day ?
jsh
Comment by jeremy — 9/30/2007 @ 7:50 am