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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.

At the beginning of 2009 I tried to get down with the golden 6×6 format but neither TLRs nor Bronica SLRs did it for me. My interest in high quality square pictures wasn’t worth the monetary cost of a Mamiya 6 and so after little deliberation once the chance came up I swapped the Mamiya C330 and some other articles of gear for a Fuji 645GA. Mr. Stella has taken the time to write up a very informative piece on this series of cameras so for technical details please check out what he has to say here. The 35mm film canister is there for scale, and the 120 roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan is there for style.

I did own the earlier manual focus version- the Fujica GS645s- for a few months the year before and found it to be an interesting switch from my usual horizontally structured cameras. But in the end my Mamiya 7 won out and rather than see it sit in a box I sold it to a friend who is putting it to great use. The MF version is usually about the same price as the 645GA in Tokyo camera shops and having shot both I’d say that if you want a quick and responsive camera for street work, the manual one is great since it lacks any delay once you release the shutter. The rangefinder patch on mine was dim on all but the sunniest of days but scale focusing worked well. The 645GA has both a shutter delay and slow autofocus which sounds like it would be a problem but it also has Auto Exposure which makes it easier to shoot. Plus it has a built in flash. The biggest trouble with this camera is the seemingly random selection of focus points. 95% of the time it is on target, but that leaves 5% for frames which make you furrow your brow as you come across pictures totally out of focus when going over contact sheets.
You might also mutter “what the hell?” as you do this.

Physically it is just about the same size as a Mamiya 7 body without a lens. It’s compactness makes it the go to camera if I am in a meduim format kind of mood when headed out for a day when the main purpose is not shooting.
Acoustically the shutter itself is quiet, but each exposure is followed by chirps and beeps and the whine of the camera advancing the film to the next frame. It’s not something I’d use in the subway.

Over the year I’ve shot a few dozen rolls with this camera, and it takes some getting used to but this is the fun part. For now I’m still trying to figure out where to stand with it. And also where to point the lens. And at what moment to trip the shutter. And then whether or not to print the negative and then if I do, how to use the photo I made with it.

Actually, that is how I am with every camera.

The lens is sharp as one might ever need, and it resolves images very nicely. At an 8×10 print the sharpness is as good as any 6×7 neg you might get, and has several times clearer detail than a frame of 35mm film.

Overall it has been a very interesting camera to shoot with. Unlike my “on a non-committal whim” 6×6 experiment I have already purchased a new 645 format negative carrier for my enlarger and that investment of about eighty bucks means I won’t be too quick to get rid of this camera anytime soon.
As I slowly fill a box with prints made from it I’ll learn more- hopefully some more pictures will end up here to be shared.

Over a year ago I bought a roll of near expired Kodak 3200 film from the bargain bin at Bic Camera in Kashiwa- and it spent the next several months on a shelf in my fridge. It was a concern that a 3200 style of grain wasn’t going to visually match the rest of my work when printed large that it got passed over but on a whim in October I ran it through a loaner M4 on a block of Omotesando.

Sample Image (Pic? Capture? Photo?)

This photo is a nearly textbook example of a boring and predictable Tokyo Street Photo. It has all the following hip and edgy elements:

1. Shot on Black and White Film.
2. Lot’s O’ Contrast (well, somewhat. The film was actually pretty grey for me)
3. Shot on a crosswalk (complete with a Left Shoulder and Back of Someone’s head in the right side of the frame)
4. Shot on a crosswalk within the Shibuya/Harajuku/Shinjuku/Ginza districts
5. Features a beautiful woman.
6. Features a LOL WTF TOKYO IS SOoooo RANDOM!!!!!1 element. (her tiara)
7. Features Large Billboard People* (albeit far in the background)
8. It most certainly LACKS a pretentious eye-rollingly embarrassing and corny title. Let’s try making up one though. How about: “And thus you saved me as the millions passed” or “As love flows in the stone city of broken dreams” or my favorite: “blah blah blah some stuff like Creed or Nickelback or a sophomore in a high school creative writing class would write blah blah.”
9. I am tired of taking these!

It’s far from being an interesting picture but it does have some grain which 3200 film is more than happy to provide. I scanned a small 5×7 print at 800dpi and the following is what a section of the photo printed on Ilford 5×7 postcard paper scanned at 800dpi on a cheap Canon flatbed scanner and “auto toned” in photoshop looks like on your monitor.

It’s hard to see in these samples, but the grain is certainly worth the price of admission if this is what you are after.

Sample Image 2

The same afternoon a few blocks over I wound up walking past the guy who should have won the 2009 One Wall grand prix, Koji Sato. (the lady who should have won was Yuki Watanabe.)

Saito leaving for a location shoot from his office in Shibuya and this was our second chance meeting in a month. The first was during the intermission of the One Wall grand prix knockdown artist talk evening in Ginza. Let me digress: Saito and I have a mutual friend from Senshu University back in 2001 or 2002 so actually we had met at least once before. If it weren’t for his incredible memory (or my height & facial structure since I am not a “looker”) I would have gone home from that evening talk event simply uneasy with a gnawing sense of discontent regarding the spectacle of publicly viewed juried photographic award distribution by Famous Tokyo Art Elites . But thanks to Saito I had both the aforementioned taste of disgust AND the wonder that comes with randomly catching up with an acquaintance after an 8 year absence.
So to meet up with him again a few weeks later was a second jolt of that wonder AND another chance to point my camera at a woman I had just barely met. Note to as of yet un-met ladies–> This is what happens when we will meet.

Personally, one roll of 3200 was enough but if it is easier (or cheaper) to get than Fuji Super Presto 1600, have a blast shooting in the near dark or at f22 at 1/500 on the street during the day. A few rolls and a Fuji Natura would be a great setup.

I’ve been mostly shooting with Fuji Presto (Neopan) for the past 8 years and despite a few flirtations with 1600 Super-Presto, it’s got the look I like and by now using manual cameras my eyes are adjusted to looking at the world through it. But if you want grain like any other film you can just over expose it. As is what (somewhat accidentally) happened here in Kamakura two weeks ago.

Details:

This brings me to another point–> The limitations of web presentation are such that it’s barely worth scanning prints to share via computer monitors. I understand that it is a necessary evil because it’s so damn useful but images online are mere suggestions as to what an actual photograph could look like. Seriously, no one listens to Bach in MIDI format but for some reason a Henri Cartier Bresson web gallery is presented as near enough to Real Pictures as anyone would need. And that’s the second point- the internet is freaking amazing in providing text based information (charts and graphs included) but when it comes to photography or video, it is simply and extremely Good Enough. But this is a post for another time.

* Big Billboard Face + Pedestrian Photographs!
This is a lazy sub-class of “street photography” which is the photographic equivalent of seeing two people at a table in a restaurant talking on mobile phones and saying to your friend “Gosh, I wonder if they’re talkin’ to each other? Har Har Har”
These pictures are some of the least challenging pictures possible- similar to Weathered Old Barn photos where the sense of Nostalgic Sentimentality is swapped with a ham-fisted combination of forced Irony and Realness since they feature unknown people and Oh My God the face on the billboard is big and the person walking past is smaller than that face! They are super easy to shoot because all you have to do is wait quietly across from a large picture of a face. China and Tokyo are the biggest offenders and Newsweek and Time feature no less than 8 of these photos from cities all over the world in each of their weekly issues.

I’m a hater!

But yes, you might as well get them out of your system (or, admittedly, keep taking them from time to time like me).
Via my undergrad graduation exhibit in 2002:

Lately I’ve really been interested in Yuki Tohyama’s collection of photographs from Kyoto entitled Sasurai, (Wandering). It’s certainly in a similar vein as her other book Line 13 published by Akaaka. The construction of Sasurai is simple and the straightforward presentation of her photographs allows one to focus on the pictures.
Her youth is apparent in this collection and like all of her other work I’ve seen it’s powered by the skill with which she brings a slightly dark point of view together with the beauty of the particular events. Her ability to keep things restrained from becoming overtly dramatic or moody is admirable and sorely lacking in a lot of photography today.

On a personal note- it was Line 13 and Sasurai which pushed me towards 35mm again this time primarily working with that gorgeous Super Presto 1600 film put out by Fuji.