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This sweet sad story would make for an excellent short film.

Today the count came to 11 shows at 10 different galleries.

Only one show (3rd District) was 100% digital. The rest were either black and white fiber prints or color prints created in an analog darkroom. All shows were worth the effort it took to visit the galleries.

START: (11:00am)

1. ERIC (in a group show) at the Shinjuku Nikon Salon

2. Masahito Agake at 3rd District Gallery

3. Naoki Sekiguchi at Totem Pole Photo Gallery

4. Tetsu Iida workshop group show at Roonee

5. Masafumi Tatemata at Gallery Niepce

Tatemata’s show was of his excellent medium format work in Mongolia.

6. Some Flickr fellows at Place M

7. Aya Okabe at Sokyusha (2:30pm)

Then I hopped the Marunouchi line to Minami-Asagaya.

8. Haruna Sato at Gallery Kaido Ribon

9. Tomomi Matsutani at Gallery Kaido Ribon

Then back on the Marunouchi line to Ginza…

10. Issei Suda at the Ginza Nikon Salon.

and then a short walk over to Hibiya-

11. Nobuyoshi Araki at Takahashi Collection Hibiya.

Over the past 6 years I’ve been able to visit nearly a dozen of Araki’s shows and Love Supreme was one of the cleanest in execution and curation. Cleanliness in this case being that which concerns the overall flow of the show and not necessarily that of photographic subject matter. When combining a large gallery space with flat photographs mounted on the wall, a feeling of sparseness becomes an issue. This might not be a bad thing. The smallest of his images are merely 10″x12″ prints, while the others are a meter and a half wide or tall, depending on their orientation. At a comfortable viewing distance he spacing between each object allows one to neatly focus on what they have in front of them without distractions from neighboring work.

From the Sentimental Journey portfolio, the photo of Yoko Araki asleep in a boat should be quite familiar to anyone with an interest in Araki’s photography. (A perfect photograph? I think so.) It is surely the most reproduced of any of his frames of film but encountering it so physically large adds a new dimension to it’s power. During my first visit one lad in the gallery took up position on the floor in front of this picture and remained there for several minutes. And like with most Araki exhibitons that I’ve attended, the first time I visited this show (today was #2) was complete in that it featured at least one teary-eyed young woman clutching a handkerchief in her hands.

Despite the fact that one can literally see most of the show from a window from the street and the rest of it in the well stocked trendy gift shop, there is an admission price of 300 yen for adults and 150 yen for Araki fans who are in junior high or even younger. To put this in perspective, 300 yen will get you two bottles of your choice of beverage from any vending machine on the streets of Tokyo. So for the mere price of a liter of tea one can spend some quality time contemplating in person the work of a photographer whose self-appointed title of Genius is truly apt.

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Here’s some more food for thought-

1. While this was a fairly ambitious gallery walk, I didn’t stop by the Konica-Minolta Plaza, the Canon gallery, the Pentax Forum, or the Leica Gallery. I didn’t visit any other of the dozens of other small galleries through out Tokyo, nor did I visit the Tokyo Metro Photo Museum in Ebisu.

2. With the exception of the juried process for the Nikon Salons and the invitation-only Takahashi Collection space, all other venues are rental galleries. That means that the cost for exhibiting rests on the shoulders of the photographers. The cheapest of these (excluding Kaido) is Totem Pole’s price of $1000 a week. Place M is nearly $1500 a week (divided by 4 people isn’t so bad though). Rather than this being a vanity issue, I find it admirable that so many people are that dedicated to their photography and the photo scene in Tokyo that they choose to invest this much time and money into keeping this experience alive and well. One bonus for the Tokyo gallery walker is that in most cases, the photographer is on hand to talk with and often to be served tea by. These spots are extremely accessible and lack any Art pretension that one may find in large western cities.

3. Most of these shows are only up for a week. By next Sunday none of these shows (save the Araki one) will still be up. This makes attending all the shows I get postcards for each week utterly (and unfortunately) impossible.

Tokyo!

This is where it is at.

Tonight I had some business with Nippon Camera and the small room where the meeting with an editor took place had three walls with bookshelves full of Japanese photobooks. There are some treasures in there if you look hard enough.

One to bring home from a bookshop would be Nagano Shigeichi’s book 1960.

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Caught up on some workprints last week. The dynamism around the crowded areas during New Years is incredible and hopefully some of that made the transition to the photographs. It’s easy to get up in faces when there is no more than a foot between you and everyone else. Plus everyone you see is in a good mood and half of those people have cameras around their necks anyway.