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January 23, 2012

Nobuyoshi Araki: People, City

Filed under: Photography,exhibitions,japan,reviews — John @ 11:04 pm

Honestly part of the reason posts here have been somewhat sparse over the past several months is due to the sheer excellence of two Japanese photo centered blogs- Street Level Japan and Microcord. Bookmark and check them out. But I digress.

In October of 2011 Microcord reported on the first of a two part exhibition of work by Nobuyoshi Araki, a post which he titled Araki Scrap. This is my reply- a short report on the second half.

The show is called: Nobuyoshi Araki: People, City

The venue is a subsidiary (?) of the Setagaya Art Museum, a smallish place called the Miyamoto Saburō kinen bijutsukan (宮本三郎記念美術館) in a west Tokyo neighborhood near Jiyugaoka station. (In case you haven’t already, it would be best at this point to read his original article before proceeding with this one since his explanation of the museum and its acquisition of this work can’t be improved on.)

The first exhibition centered on the people of Tokyo. The second focuses on the city itself.

Upon paying your 200 yen entry fee, this is what you get:

1. Two levels of large horizontal monochrome 16×20 prints from Tokyo Story (1993).

2. Two levels of large vertical monochrome 16×20 prints from Towards Winter. Tokyo: a City Heading for Death

3. Four levels of less large color prints (11×14) from Tokyo Biyori (1993). This is not to be confused with the Takenaka Naoto directed/starred, Araki inspired/affiliated motion picture from 1997.

4. Three very large scrapbooks of large contrasty photographs, two from Araki’s series Zoo, and one from Subway, both created in 1966. Each scrapbook lies open enclosed in a cabinet. Each series has a video monitor showing the full content of a scrapbook as a digital slideshow presentation. Curiously, while the images were shot in a vertical format the orientation for both monitors is the typical horizontal one. This leaves two large black bars on either side of the centered image which in theory could have been used to show the pictures almost life-size had the curators choose to simply rotate the monitors 90 degrees either direction in their wall mounts to match the direction of the digital files. Maybe someone couldn’t find a screwdriver.

The prints in this exhibition are gorgeous- but those in the top rows are a good 7 feet off the ground, maybe higher. All are mounted to large wooden-framed felt covered boards with (typical for an Araki exhibition) clear push pins. A layer of thin acrylic sheet material is stretched over the frames to protect the prints. These boards are hung one atop the other. This is due to physics and geometry- there’s only so much wall space for so many prints. But did the top row of Tokyo Biyori color prints need to be put so near the ceiling?
Unfortunately step ladders are not provided. But for the digital monitor work, chairs and benches are.

The monochrome prints are from these two books:

Neither is available in the gift shop (one postcard rack near the ticket window) since both have been out of print for almost 20 years. That said, both are mainstays of any used photobook store in Tokyo and relatively cheap considering their overall visual impact and importance in Araki’s artistic output. Many critics (and the photographer himself) have discussed Araki’s photography as capturing the flux of Eros and Thantos. Granted, the Eros-centric books sell a lot more copies and have given Araki renown abroad but these two dark books are just as important, if not a lot more interesting in the overall scope of his published work. Even though both books feature pictures that keep me from looking through them on the train (cough cough) this exhibition is one for photography fans of any age or constitution. That means no naked ladies.

The reproduction of the photographs from Tokyo Biyori are, as photographs, less impressive in the book as they are actual prints. On the other hand, considering the content that they follow in the book- photocopies of Araki and his wife Yoko’s diary and daily planners before her death, the book has the chance to create a different kind of response in the viewer than anything you might feel in a gallery squinting upwards while standing on your tiptoes among strangers and security cameras.

The thing about the prints on the walls is this- all are available to be seen in several of Araki’s photobooks*. The two series from 1966 shown on the monitors are less represented, at least in their full forms. At the risk of reaching unnecessary levels of hyperbole, both sets feature as good of Street Photographs as you’ll ever see by any photographer, anywhere. With the enormous tomes next to you while sitting before the monitors watching the images pass one can really get a feel for the amount of energy that their creation entailed. Large (Possibly A2 sized) scrapbooks chock full of large prints don’t just happen by accident. And the fact that the content of the images is just as cheeky as the existance of comically large books is fantastic. These pictures deserve to be the subject of a chunky and faithfully reproduced photobook- why they haven’t, I have no idea. If anyone could get such a book made it would have be Araki.

All in all, this is an interesting little exhibition that is well worth 200 yen and an an hour of your time some afternoon. The show is up until March 20th, 2011. The Tokyo Art Beat entry is here.

*Speaking of Araki photobooks, I’m quite looking forward to visiting the Araki Photobook exhibition in Izu sometime between March and July of this year.

December 13, 2011

Shingo Wakagi: Now’s the Past

Filed under: Photography,books,reviews — John @ 8:32 pm

Now’s the Past isn’t one of those life-altering, previous-experience-shattering photobooks, but it is a competent collection of pictures with a really good name.

Shingo Wakagi, a photographer who has been commercially active since at least 1997 was given access to the sets of two period Japanese films, The Sea Watches by Kei Kumai and the Kon Ichikawa film Dora Heita in 1999 and 2001, respectively. As decent as the images are, the resulting collection of (mostly) monochrome and color images is fairly similar to the kinds pictures you might expect anyone to make in similar circumstances. There’s an overall attempt at a dialogue examining the contrast between existing in a real present only to labor at creating a fictional past. The lead technique to accomplish this is often the juxtaposing actors in period costume as they interact with contemporary technology and locations. In some of the more obvious examples (mobile phones aside!) we’re shown that some of the buildings you see in films are hollow and when shot from the rear, guess what, they look even more phony. The Fiction/Reality thing runs a little shallow throughout the book but some of the pictures on their own are quite nice.

The portraits of cast members themselves tend to be of most interest to me personally.

And I think I might have bought this book for this picture alone:

Now’s the Past is one of those books that you might not mind having, but wonder why you brought it home in the first place. It’s not really rare or valuable or even terribly interesting, especially compared to Wakagi’s excellent color work from the past five years or so. But it’s by no means a bad book to look through. I’d still suggest Labyrinth of Dreams if you absolutely have to have an A4 sized book about a late 20th century Japanese film on your shelf.

November 29, 2011

Jun Abe: Manila

Filed under: Photography,books,reviews — John @ 8:12 pm

The latest book from Osaka based publisher/photographer collective Vacuum Press is a collection of sweaty pictures Jun Abe took in the Philippines simply entitled Manila.

Rather than any sort of introduction the title page includes the only non-photographic contextual information in the entire book: August, 1983.

The inclusion of the date is interesting in that it offers the viewer a slot in which to chronologically shelve this book with the rest of the Jun Abe collection:
Citizens (1979 – 1983)
Manila (August, 1983)
Kokubyaku Note (1996 – 1999)

Similar to the world Abe discovered on the streets of his home town again an aggressive use of the frame the camera creates is multiplied in amongst (and through) a ramshackle collection of other windows and edges on the streets of Manila. The ways he scatters an image with limbs and eyes and crevices makes this book visually intriguing. The fact that he was working far from home in a land remote from his own rough hometown adds a new kind of interest.

While Abe’s work often deals with a gaze back at the camera and the photographer (and by extension, you the viewer) in Manila this interaction makes a majority of the book. As intensively as he looks, he is seen and watched. One is always aware that this isn’t his town and these aren’t his people.

Abe’s interests in the Philippines during his visit extended to the interiors of the town and other creatures which inhabited it.

Several images in the last quarter of the book were made within the confines of a prison. The odd thing is that bars and guards aside, the flow of images is structured so that you don’t really know how you got there, or even when you arrived. Just like the rest of the country he saw under an August sun almost 30 years ago every surface is worn, ragged, sometimes missing teeth, and decorated.

Part of my personal enjoyment to the pictures in Manila and indeed Abe’s other work is his utter lack of assigning a particular moral message about the subjects or societies he photographs. These aren’t pictures attempting to evaluate or better an aspect of humanity. They’re one man’s records of a place seen. Luckily we are able to take a peek as well.

Like the rest of Jun Abe’s books, Manila can be purchased from Japan Exposures.

March 29, 2011

Mika Kitamura & Yuki Watanabe: Two Sights Past

Filed under: Media,Photography,books,japan,reviews,tokyo — John @ 10:51 am

For the better late than never files: Two Sights Past by Mika Kitamura and Yuki Watanabe.

Bambinart Gallery has been working to give young artists exposure in Tokyo. Two Sights Past was an exhibition held there back in January and February of this year, a continuation of an ongoing collaborative project between Mika Kitamura and Yuki Watanabe. Part of a larger series of work dating back to 2002, Two Sights Past received its first major recognition in 2006 from Kotaro Izawa in the Canon New Cosmos of Photography.

In their own words in regards to this project:

Mika:

I think longing and envy is what motivated me to first photograph her.
And I remember that before we were friends I mostly photographed her on the sly. But at that time affection and the desire of possess mingles when the distance between us accidentally diminished. Over four years – a long-time yet short all the same – we changed more than a little and so naturally the way we took pictures of each other changed too. Were I a painter I don’t think I would paint her, and if I were a sculptor I don’t think I would sculpt her. Always looking at her from the same distance, I learned both the joy and hardship of continuously photographing the same person. I now realize that this feeling is something only photography can capture. And so with affection I will gaze upon her with these mingled feelings of affection and jealousy, of superiority, inferiority, and love. And I will capture them all in a single photograph. I think that everything is okay.

Yuki:

first encountered her when I was 20 and that is already 4 years ago*. We spent more and more time together, and yet while our time together is more precious than anything it is with conflicting emotions that we photograph each other. Even now these emotions change, surface, and vanish.
And though the temperature difference of emotion may stay under the surface, she is a constant presence. I believe continuing things will discover some things. Over time our surroundings, relationships, emotions, will inevitably change. The preciousness and hardship of being together, the joy of having met. And I hope that we can change time into form. I thank her for my feeling this way.

*4 years in 2006, which would be 9 years now. Seeing as how time keeps flowing, that puts these ladies nearly halfway to a point Izawa mentions in his statement of selection:

The photos wonderfully capture the passage of time. David Armstrong and Nan Goldin have done work based on the same approach, so what they are doing is not completely new. Still, the photos are a pleasure to look at. The relationship between them has a sister-like quality that conveys a sense that they share a great many things. Their photographic technique is about the same level, which I think gives the work good balance. They’re both young, and they have not been shooting each other for very long. If they’re still doing this in 20 years they will have created something truly exceptional.

Is the series exceptional yet? Certainly in its overall beauty. Time is dealt with loosely with the resulting images being less formal than the obviously more well known series of the Brown sisters, another set of images which invite comparison. While it’s not imperative to know that the exhibition at Bambinart is essentially a pretty waypoint on an attractive photographic timeline, that external context can put things in perspective to provide further contemplation/enjoyment of the work.

Some meta-context would be this: This particular exhibition was of pictures Mika and Yuki took in Budapest, Hungary while visiting a gallery there that exhibited their earlier Two Sights Past portfolio in 2009. In some of the newer images you can see their earlier photos framed in the background. Such a vortex of self-referencing creation would make Michael Gondry proud. I find the lightheartedness and beauty of the images something worth enjoying. Such elements of this project counters more “serious” portfolios which depend on overwrought forced intellectualism/conceptualism as a reason to exist. Two attractive and skilled women photographing each other in Budapest? I can see no problems with this.

The Bambinart exhibition was composed of monochrome and color inkjet prints from their Hungry trip pinned as a grid on the wall. Two larger framed prints (seen in the top two images above) served as an anchor/introduction to the rest of the show.

A small collection of pictures accompanied the exhibition. These “prints” were inkjet-made, the same as what was pinned on the wall, although fewer in number. Orders were placed and and paid for at the gallery and were sent out a few weeks later.

I’ve mentioned before that in Japanese the term Photobook 「写真集」 shashinshu is comprised of three kanji. The first two mean “Photograph” with the last one detonating “collection”. Unlike the term “Book”, no binding is guaranteed or implied. Mika and Yuki submitted a thick handmade bound book with several hundred pages to the Canon New Cosmos back in 2006 (sadly it fell apart as a stream of visitors flipped through it every day for 3 weeks) but this current little collection of Two Sights Past is different. Coming in at thirty 5×7 sized “pages” (six fewer than a roll of film) it is concise, sweet, and a glimpse at even better things to come.

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