Media « _valerian

August 13, 2010

ユメノ銀河　Yume no ginga

Filed under: Photography,books,japan — John @ 9:52 pm

A while back a friend gave me a copy of a collection of photos by punk rocker/movie director Sogo Ishii shot on the set of his film Labyrinth of Dreams ユメノ銀河. Despite having the book on my shelf for about 2 years I hand’t taken the effort to find the film and watch it until today.
Starring Tadanobu Asano and Rena Komine and shot entirely in black and white, this cryptic 1997 film is visually arresting, even when subtitled in German(?) and posted in nine parts on youtube. I’m interested in learning more about where it was filmed but haven’t been able to find out yet. It is certainly well worth keeping your eyes open for the next time you end up in a Book Off used DVD section.

Not only is this book fairly common at used bookshops, additionally it is handsomely printed and well edited. Color pictures have been laid in with monochrome shots, most which are not simply rote grabs from the final cut. The inclusion of the camera in the frame keeps the book from being limited to a rudimentary version of the film in book form and rather opens it up to a greater reflection of the production involved in its creation. All in all, it’s not a bad little book to draw influence from, especially if you are ever in the position to get an attractive young woman dressed up in an 1940s era bus attendant uniform. A guy can dream, can’t he?

Comments (0)

July 23, 2010

Daido Moriyama: Northern 2

Filed under: General,books,japan,theory — John @ 10:30 am

A second (or is it third?) volume of Moriyama’s photos from northern Japan in the late 1970s was published in June. My main interest in this book was to see a single show from the exhibition had made it into publication, a picture that was missing from it’s sister companion published in 2009.
Northern (1) is horizontally oriented to accommodate the overwhelming selection of well, horizontally oriented pictures. It is printed long and wide, matching the aspect ratio of 35mm film very nicely.

Northern 2 is a collection of vertically oriented pictures and feels more “Moriyama-y” this way. Thankfully both books are not as thick as some of his other ones, allowing for a clearer look at the photographs. The separation of work in these two books is interesting in how elemental is was decided (Up and Down vs Across) but more than that what is even more (unsurprisingly?) satisfying is how no matter how the pictures are set they mesh perfectly as an entire coherent body of work.

I can’t really say if this was the first photo book which I bought for the appearance of a single and particular photograph, but there was a particular image from the Northern exhibition at Rathole in early 2009 which I have been fixated on ever since the first moment I laid eyes on it:

Perhaps falling for a single photo in a collection of Moriyama’s pictures defeats the purpose, and it is quite likely that I have a soft spot for pictures where a woman is centered in the frame with a tree sprouting from her head. Tossing in the whole 1970s Showa thing with her long hair, straight expression and how she has her arms situated there, and BAM you got a fantastic photo.

The large print in the exhibition was framed and in a row with other vertically oriented pictures (in a separate section of the gallery, away from the horizontal ones) and had a price tag of nearly (if I remember correctly) $4000. To me this is just as affordable as if it was priced at four million dollars. So what I was after was a reproduction in book form. And a reproduction was what I got.

Even though I hadn’t seen the actual image in over a year and a half, upon flipping to the page pictured above in the store it was striking to instantly realize just how severely cropped the image is as it appears in the book. You can compare a picture from the exhibition with the page and see how the integrity of the frame (of the print) is lost, the balance of space around the top of the tree, the subtraction of that lovely little white triangle created by the umbrella and her skirt, gone. Even that stain from the gutter is missing its partner. These things are important to me. Looking at the current edition of The Americans versus a vintage copy is a similar experience. The inclusion of more of the frame in the later books add visual information to which was lacking before.

But then again, who is to say which is right? It is very well that Moriyama preferred the crop of this photo to the full print. Or perhaps (and more likely) it was the book designer who made this trimming decision. Earlier I mentioned that Northern (1) was printed to more or less fit the aspect ratio of 35mm film, however Northern 2 is actually a little bit shorter:

So we could have gotten a bit more in there had they printed each book at the same size. Why they didn’t, I would be quite interested to find out.

Admittedly, whining on a blog about the missing millimeter or so from a particular frame of film shot by a prolific photographer almost 35 years ago is not the best way to spend a summer morning.
Would I have responded as positively to the image if I hadn’t seen the print and known what it looks like printed full frame? I’d probably have this mega-crush on her either way so maybe the answer is yes. On strictly formal and aesthetically personal tastes, I’d sure prefer the actual print (If you want to hook me up with four grand oh man I will totally set up a paypal account for this).

But if anything it is a reminder that as viewers of art we have to take what we see as what we see. That is, even though the print showed one thing, and the book the same thing (ever so) slightly different, that is just how it works. The print is NOT the book, and the picture in the book isn’t that actual print. And to further compound the issue, neither manifestations of that image are actually that woman or that point in time at that point in space. They (and by extension the pictures I posted here of those images) each exist as separate and distinct objects in this world.

Remember, if the nature of photography and reproduction was easy to comprehend the entire enterprise would be soon become utterly boring. Thankfully it is anything but.

Comments (1)

June 14, 2010

Daido Moriyama: NAGISA

Filed under: Media,Photography,books,japan,reviews — John @ 6:10 am

The thing about Moriyama Daido’s books is that as nice as they are, by now they certainly won’t surprise anyone. You know what you’re going to get the moment you see the cover. Ginza? Buenos Aries? Hawaii? You know exactly how the pictures are going to look. As a native Nebraskan I can tell you that if Moriyama were to spend a week shooting in the Cornhusker State the inevitable collection is going to look just like Moriyama does Nebraska. And it probably wouldn’t look all that different than his pictures of anywhere else he has photographed. Until the other day the only book by Moriyama that I had in my collection was the cheaper of his two Hokkaido books. To me he had always been one of those photographers whose work was never all that interesting and it wasn’t until his Hokkaido show at Rathole gallery when it clicked. I found his exhibited work extremely moving, the gravity of which was revealed in a gallery setting with prints metaphorically layering upon none another to create a dizzying experience. I went 5 times to that show. In print (as opposed to prints) the books felt flat. Literally his pictures are layered on one another in book form but nearly all of his books were too constricting, too much about the book than the images to be of much personal interest.

So the other day at Sokyusha, the preeminent photo book publisher in Tokyo, I surprised myself by purchasing a copy of Moriyama’s recent book Nagisa. As I flipped through it from behind the counter the shop owner mentioned that this collection is simply of Moriyama’s current love interest, a kabukicho & kayokoku singer named Yoko Nagisa. While my photography book collection might be lean on Moriyama Daido, books featuring lovers or wives of Japanese photographers are well represented. Looking at it in the context of such a book it was doubly interesting.

Yoko. What else could her name be but Yoko?

On one hand Nagisa follows that grand tradition of Japanese photo books centering on a singer or musical act. On the other hand it follows the other even grander tradition of Japanese photo books in that it are collections of photos of a lover. Since both of those hands belong to Moriyama Daido it is very much the book you might imagine when hearing ” Moriyama Daido’s Kabukicho lounge singer girlfriend love story“. If you know much about any of the words in the previous sentence you probably have a good idea as to how this book looks.

The book is handsome. It’s thick, visually dense, and features exquisite printing. Laid out flat it pulls the viewer in. Plus she is gorgeous. But for as hefty as the book is and for as distantly beautiful as Ms. Nagisa is there isn’t much development of her or her relationship with the photographer throughout all 200+ pages. She makes a good picture, hell, Moriyama makes a great picture and that’s what this comes down to. It’s two people good at what they do- one skilled with a camera, the other one looking great with eyeshadow in vintage outfits, moody bars, back streets of Shinuku, singing at Moriyama exhibitions, on desolate beaches, in the last train car, or among cherry trees in bloom. Sometimes it is several of these things at once.

But for every moody monochromatic sunset or languid look off into the distance one might feel that what’s not captured is true personal development. We don’t know any more about Yoko Nagisa by the last few pages than we could gather from the first ones. Moriyama’s Yoko is certainly not Araki’s Yoko. That said, maybe we don’t need to expect intense character development or a Deep Story when looking at collections like this. A beautiful book can be just that. In this way this collaboration between these two performers has resulted in something well worth a look.

Comments (2)

May 28, 2010

yanaka antique shops are amazing

Filed under: Photography,books,japan,tokyo — John @ 9:20 pm

Hey let’s check out this antique shop in Yanaka. It is called Hatena. It is located here.

Looking good. Many retro Showa items adorning the walls all hell of nicely. So far it is worth having to take off one’s shoes at the door on the first floor.

Yeah man there is some good stuff here. But let’s check the books.

Damn. A first edition of Zokushin. For 10,000 yen, too. Not bad. For tonal clarity I prefer the images in the re-release better but a first edition is to those who are in to this sort of stuff, a first edition. Looks like there are some books on this other shelf too:

We got Mr. Naito on deck next to Mr. Shomatsu Tomei and his Nagasaki book. Both were priced accordingly to current markets which was about fourteen Benjamins and two Grants for the Tomei. Back behind some other stuff sat one of Hosoe Eikoh’s collections:

By this point the genial owner of the shop had stuck up a conversation about Japanese photography and then asking if I had seen “this one” he took a book down from up high. He left it’s neighbor Provoke #3 on the shelf—

and placed it in my hands. I swear to god I am telling the truth when I say the Star Trek the Next Generation theme song came on his CD player at this moment.

He said his cat had gotten a hold of it hence the outer cardboard cover condition, but why not open it up and flip through it? He was quite excited about sharing it.

An original copy of The Map by Kawada Kikuji. The shop owner (whose name I have forgotten and unfortunately cannot read the kanji of on his business card) had that kind of inner and true enthusiasm which is rare when discussing scarce and valuable objects because it wasn’t about this item’s collector value it was about it’s content. Amazingly he was more into this book as a fantastic collection of photography than he was the fact that a fellow could get a heap of cash for it. Which is why it (and Provoke #3) were not for sale. Good man.