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One of the fantastic things about living in Japan is the avalibility of fine photo magazines an average bookstore in any suburban Tokyo neighborhood. Last night at the grand opening of a new shopping center I picked up two magazines at the new bookstore there.

Phat Photo 2007 Nov - Dec
I keep saying “I don’t really buy Phat Photo” but actually it kind seems like I did every two months this year. It is an interesting publication, not so much for the actual photos (or the over-all LOOK that it has cornered the market on), but for it’s insight into a particular section of the Japanese contemporary scene. It touches fairly evenly on Art, Commercial, Fashion photography, and Camera Enjoyment. They have an column called “Girls Leica Club”. They debate using a Pentax 67 vs a Mamiya 7. They have ads for Epson printers, Nikon Cameras, and articles by the younger sister of an English teacher I’ve taught with at my school. This particular issue devotes space to Alec Soth and Stephen Shore.

This issue came with a roll of film which as a concept is AMAZING. Can you imagine for a second that any photo/camera magazine in America would include a special roll of film to commemorate 7 years in print, and then name the film “Rainbow 7″ ? ? It came in it’s own custom box (that was inserted into the magazine and held tight by a rubber band).

The magazine promises the film to be very colorful and make reds pink, and blues and greens cute. Non-Scientific Results to be posted here sometime.

Photographica #8
This is hands down THE best photography magazine that is not Aperture. But to compare the two would not be very fair to either. Photographica is more arty than “Commercial Photo” which has been in publication for many decades– with this issue concentrating on “Girls Photo Now” and devoting the first SIXTY EIGHT pages to Ninagawa Mika. A few pages later, previously mentioned photographer Miyuki Motoki and fellow Matsudo city resident Tomoe Murakami are featured with 4 pages each, along with several other up-coming female photographers in Japan.

A later feature in this issue is “I Love Brownie!”, detailing why we should “Let’s buy a medium format camera!”. “Brownie” is the term for 120 film in Japan but spoken it sounds more like “Bu-rou-nee” and it was not until purchasing this very magazine that I realized where “Bu-rou-nee” came from. This is a full color 18 page feature giving one page to each of the medium format cameras currently in production now (Not counting the page for the Plaubel Makina). Then 2 pages to photographers who use these cameras.

This is a 1600 yen magazine, but the past few have come with something interesting enough to warrant the purchase of each issue. “Photographer’s file 2007_2″ is a small booklet in the photo at the top is a collection of 55 photographers- two pages to each with about 3 photos for each person. Below is a quick bio and contact information for each photographer. In addition each photographer states which format they shoot in- Looks like 95% are film only, with the rest using both film and digital. Only a few were exclusively digital.
It goes without saying that this is something to get into. (whoops I said it)

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It is a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, Sunday morning and I have one free day to myself for the next 2 weeks.
If you’ll excuse me– There are a slew of photo galleries to see in Shinjuku and my new Pentax 67II is begging to go out for the day.

(I honestly won’t have an hour free until next Sunday night so I got to do this)

The Casio EXILIM EX-S20

WHAT IS SO GREAT?
It is Red. Also, instead of Auto Focus, it uses Pan Focus. There is a switch (!) between an icon of a mountain and a flower. The “Flower Range” is good at about 1 foot away but anything else I shoot with Mountain. The lack of auto-focus is great because there is no shutter lag when taking a photograph. 2 mega-pixels, no zoom, 10mb built in memory… just perfect. The 256 SD card in it takes 2 normal days to fill (or one long, interesting afternoon). It’s 37mm lens broke my exclusive 28mm use in film and opened new possibilities. Also, this camera kills humidity and makes darkness green and blocky, which is interesting because film does not. I love how it’s photos are boxy-sharp and flat, with blown highlights.

MORE NUMBERS:
The odometer filps over at 10,000 pictures and I’ve taken 13,987 since I bought it in June of 2005 (20,000 yen). That’s about 388 rolls of 35mm film at 36 frames a roll. Man, if you count the 1000 rolls (give or take a hundred) of 35mm film shot since buying this camera and add in 200+ of 120 film, and then a couple hundred polaroids, the Total comes to: A LOT.

OTHER:
I love this camera, if not for just the ease of use and weird little pictures it takes, but for also how it is the antithesis of all that is wrong with the measurebaiting that goes on online (Think photo.net or the “Online Photographer”) where is New is Better but the photos never change. I never think that this camera will make any “better” pictures than the ones it is able to make. It makes the pictures that it can make and so do I, regardless what camera is in my hand.

It is boring when tools and methods are blindly held against some Holy Grail of photographic technical perfection. SHhhhh I shouldn’t say this, but for the most part, current technology is Good Enough for 99% of people who are not making their living with a camera (and for 98% of those who do). I’d say it has been this way for decades.

More than demonstrating technical prowess, the actual and literal experience of making a photograph, followed later by relating and interpreting it is far more interesting than just making a photograph to use a camera.

Photography is not simply about making “better” pictures, but about answering and asking questions. The photographer has to deal with a multitude of issues with a camera to their eye, but all photographs can deal with are surfaces. The questions (and answers) a picture suggests are most interesting when they are about things that can’t actually be photographed.

There is no set way to do this, but different cameras slightly alter how you might go about trying.

Clockwise from the upper left corner:

Photography Until Now by John Szarkowski
From what I was able to read on the train while going home, it looks to be a fantastic book. A serious mental investment towards better understanding photography written by probably the greatest thinker of and writer on the art and craft. He can, through canny wit and mind bending clarity, tell you all the things about nearly anything that you soon realize you didn’t understand near as well as you should have. Eyes wide open: WOW and in a daze is how I come off of his essays and books. Who needs drugs?

砂を数える Counting Grains of Sand 1976-1989　 by Hiromi Tsuchida
Today’s best book-store find was a first edition of Tsuchida Sensei’s Counting Grains of Sand at a shop in Ochanomizu. The recently published new version is still widely avalible but this was the first time I had come across a copy of the original. Counting Grains of Sand is a good companion to his other book: Zokushin (俗神).

Japan 100 years ago １００年前日本
Quite a few photographs of Japan 100 years ago but what strikes me the most is how the visual culture (posters, postcards, matchbooks, etc) of that time (and the next 30 decades after) feels far more intelligently crafted than things designed in America with the western aesthetic standards of that period. But that is another post for another time.

Tokyo 40 years ago ４０年前の東京
I mentioned this before but thought that since it is part of a series and all it might as well show up on this blog again. Great photographs of Tokyo in 1963 and ‘64. I mentioned to Onishi sensei that I bought it and he mentioned that the photographer is a good friend of his.

The Trolleys of Showa Tokyo 部電が走った昭和の東京
It’s one thing to be American in America and say (seriously) out loud “Why can’t things be more like the 1950s?” but as an American in Tokyo I sure as hell say “Why can’t things be more like the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s?” over and over in my mind when looking through this book and all the time in East Tokyo, or when I walk past Showa-era buildings anywhere else. There is always Minowa to go shooting in. And Kameido. But I hear that there are good pictures to be had north of Urayasu . . .

Readymades by Jeff Brouws
There are some really wonderful essays interspersed through even better photographs in this blocky little photo book of pictures of American Roadside Artifacts. My favorite section is the “Partially Painted Pickup Trucks” (Look here to see some of the pictures) for not just the trucks but for how each truck relates to it’s surroundings. Some hold entire houses in their beds while others are pinned down by the light poles and powerlines in the background.

Lincoln, Nebraska, Feb. 14 2004

I took this on Valentine’s day in Nick’s old apartment in Lincoln back in 2004. I think it was late at night- Maybe even early the 15th. But maybe not. I don’t know.
Nobu has a baseball bat and wooden sword in his hands, while Tsubasa on the couch has a beer and a Desert Eagle. But this was Lincoln and not Tulsa so even if there is indeed a large Israeli-made combat handgun in the picture, nothing came of it. In reality the gun was just passed from person to person with the trigger lock done tight.
Maybe the picture implies a different story or makes people want to make some dumb and over-general comment about the state of young people.

In the end it is just a photograph.