_valerian

Have you ever walked around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo? There is an Imperial Palace in Lincoln, Nebraska, and as far as a Chinese joint it isn’t so bad but walking around it wouldn’t take more than a minute unless you were walking backwards. The path around Tokyo’s Imperial Palace is wide and pleasant and would take a good hour at least to complete. Also, it is also full of joggers which you’ll be passed by as they scoot past in brand name sunglasses and small caps with short bills. The south western quarter of the path is quiet and green.

Yesterday I kicked around Ginza and got word that Mika and Mai were getting together for coffee in Shinjuku later, so I headed that direction on foot, which was why I ended up on the path around the palace. It’s like in Star Trek IV how they have to go around the sun to pick up speed for time travel; the palace is the sun but instead of eventually getting to neck pinch a punk in a bus in San Francisco in 1986, I ended up near the Japanese supreme court building and the National Kabuki Theatre. Walking down Aoyama-dori will take you past a Pentax building with a five- story tall mosaic that looks like abstract brush strokes done in 1967. I should have gotten a picture. Further on down the street was Akasaka-Mistuke station and the Marunouchi line which took me to Shinjuku San-chome station and the current show at the 3rd District Gallery.

“Yokohama 2000-2004” by Haruto Hoshi is a set of photos taken of his friends and acquaintances whom “ain’t in the regular kind of business” so to speak. This can be quickly gathered by the content of the images, but also since it is a show in Tokyo, the artist was on hand to talk about the work. And, serve tea. Does this happen in New York? Do you go to a Bruce Gilden show and he pops open a bottle of pepsi for you? And politely hands you the glass?

The pictures were similar in vein to the work of Yang Seung Woo, who also recently had a show at 3rd District. Hoshi told me that he met Yang on the streets of Kabukicho, a section of town that both make their work in. We also talked about shooting particular districts in Tokyo, and how the recent influx of tourists has altered parts of town. It is most likely that the only native Tokyo-ites in Asakusa’s Sensouji temple area are the people selling goods, and even Ameyokocho in Ueno has become a bit of a Disney Land with families and strollers and camcorders. Hoshi also noted that he kept seeing a group of gaijin guys in Kabuki-cho at night with cameras hanging off their necks too. After a few cups of tea, it was time to head to the Konica Minolta Plaza to meet up with Mai and Mika.

Mai’s friend Osakabe had an interesting show of color work. He is a photo student at Tokyo Kogei University and must have hauled his Bronica all over Japan to get the photos he did for the show. That is dedication- I got rid of my Bronica after a week of struggle.

The next gallery over was a brilliant selection of photographs by Yuka Kobashi. Right now I’ll flat out say that the small little flash gallery is incapable of doing justice to the work. The selection given is not nearly as interesting as the rest of the photos, and the actual prints were far more gorgeous than any monitor can display. Looking at the work I was struck by the a feeling that I had never properly known how to look at a photograph before this encounter with her pictures. This experience, seeing art that makes you forget all other art that you’ve seen before is extremely rare and intensly personal. I couldn’t promise that anyone else will have this feeling. But that’s something that goes along with experiencing photography- there is no set way that a photograph is supposed to be felt. The photographer has no control over this, at least not the way everyone with a camera thinks that they do. It would be boring if it were so easy as someone saying “This picture means _________.” and everyone agreed.
For me Kobashi’s pictures meant that the innate nature of photography, the recreation of time and space onto a flat sheet of paper can be so unexpectedly beautiful that it’s a wonder that any of them could have been made at all. I know that sounds like a cheap cop-out sentiment, but unless you can actually see the actual prints, it just won’t be the same. To top it off she had two handmade photo books laid out on the gallery’s bench for viewing. I wonder if the handmade photo book phenomenon is a particularly Japanese thing? I’m not talking about simply sliding some prints into portfolio pages- I mean the ones made completely from scratch. This could be another post for another time.

Later the three of us had coffee, and Mika had to go home so we said good bye.

Then Mai and I went to Freshness Burger where I tore up a Vegetable Burger and found out that the Contax G series flash works with a Leica:

(this is why you shouldn’t shoot from the hip, you might mess up what could have been a better picture)

Viewing 6000 polaroids at once is enough to bewilder anyone, but the fact that they were all taken by Araki makes a visit to his current show rathole gallery a dizzying experience.