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Upon his invitation*, this evening I attended Hiromi Tsuchida’s opening reception for his wonderful solo retrospective; 土田ヒロミのニッポン / Tsuchida Hiromi’s Nippon.
I only had time for a quick lap around the gallery, and the crowd of people made it hard to get close to the photographs. The original prints are gorgeous, and there is so much going on in all of them. They each deserve to be read, and hopefully a weekday morning of my winter break can be spent doing just that. Some thoughts on the work will be written after that.
The accompanying catalogue is a veritable Greatest Hits album, the kind of CD you buy even though you already have all those songs on 6 different disks and know them by heart. The “linear notes” (2 essays on Tsuchida’s work) are excellent and any Photo Book this good for 2500 yen is a deal. (however the Book Nerd in me would have paid twice more for a hardcover with slightly better print quality).

*His Word just barely got me in, as the desk ladies tersely informed me that the party was for guests with paper invitations only. It could have been about the free food and drink, but having turned down free alcohol every time it has been offered in the past 2 weeks (tonight being the 3rd time) it’s not like I was about to break my (28 year) streak by consuming any of the wine. This is not something I even wanted to try to explain. However having a business card helped, and so did the fact that Naoko was right behind me in line. We had not seen each other since May, so I’d like to think that her knowing who I was (and suprise at our accidental meeting) lent an air of legitimacy to my cause.