I hit some galleries in Shinjuku today- – and passed a place I remember seeing in Araki’s book the night before:
Again, this isn’t the start of some project- – it’s just a game.
March 9, 2011
February 14, 2011
No stories to tell
I look at a Zero fighter and think Daaaaamn that is a pretty airplane. Just perfectly proportioned and lithe. In person I’ve only ever seen this one and another hanging from the ceiling at an JSDF museum in Shizuoka in 2002.
So not having any responsibility as a photographer to owe anyone a story- and no desire to push a particular ethical point of view makes stopping by places like Yasukuni Shrine quite easy. I’ve visited the shrine several times since 2002 and it is an interesting place to visit. I think that it is an important spot to visit if one has any real desire to learn more about Japan. I’m fully aware of the various controversies, but frankly those things are not interesting to me as a photographer. The large wooden doors with their golden chrysanthemum emblems however, are. I don’t want to go around making mental compartments for places. Everywhere is accessible and possible to photograph.
Speaking of Yasukuni, I’ve yet to visit on that crazy day of August 15th. This is not just because mid August is a horrible time to be outdoors in Japan, but mostly because I’m not interested in running around playing Gaijin InternetBlog PhotoJournalist (Photoblogaijin™) in amongst a thousand beefy yelling men in fake uniforms and aviator sunglasses and five hundred other Gaijin with DLSRS that get to clacking when ever someone raises their voice and fist. (note: this is the entire time). I guess in the end both sides get what they want… the nationalists get an audience and the righteous get assured of more blog hits and comments on Flickr.
I don’t know. More and more I’m just interested in playing around with issues in a different way, or at least seeing just how offhand I can get a picture to look and still be interesting. The less it looks like I’m pushing a hamfisted point of view (war bad!) or sentimental story (awwwww war bad), the better.
A dozen books on the Pacific War and American occupation of Japan have seriously affected and enhanced my own personal understandings of Japan, but I don’t attempt to consciously employ that material when I have a camera in hand. I don’t see a Japanese flag and think “wow I got to get a shot of this for a series dealing with Japanese Identity in the 21st century” or anything like that. My main interest lies in working with the descriptive nature of photography. Another in-your-face tilted shot of a screaming rightwinger reflected in riot police visor is one thing, but a picture of 12 year old girl in a USA sweatshirt shot like something for facebook (and indeed, it was) is another. I could have gotten closer or framed tighter, but it’s this less obvious kind of picture that I am interested in. It’s a way to subvert that Photojournalist Game where people try to be all “erudite” or Meaningful.
Freeing oneself from some kind of self-imagined & self-imposed storytelling responsibility lets you focus on learning from pictures, not just what you think makes for important content.
Maybe that difference is similar to the gap between a coldish portrait by Honma Takashi and the usual Up Close at f1.2 important people face pictures that news magazines use to illustrate their Man of the Year articles.
Better to lay a set of pictures out and let the viewer come to their own conclusions.
Also, red bowties. Those have got to be tough to tie.
And a later I saw a man walking four poodles in a nearby park.
Check that out he is with four poodles.
December 9, 2010
misses and hits
When time allows I’ve been printing 35mm work from this past year like mad. It’s been an enjoyable and constant learning process.
The more I do, the more I do.
These first two pictures I printed but soon realized that their only (personal) function is simply to show me what not to do:
Neither image is worth a second look- what’s more they are so overly “Tokyo” photo cliches that it’s not even funny. I’m more interested in photographs that just might be near-failures, a charge throughout the image that keeps it from being too arty. The taxi one is a cheap shot (although I have no trouble with a similarly themed image) which visually would have been better served with that taxi in the background less spot-on. And the subway platform cell phone couple. . . seriously, how many more pictures do we need of people immersed in their cell phones anyway? It’s almost as bad as all those uncountable pictures of people slightly blurred as they walk past a large photo or “interesting” wall in Ginza while looking into their phones.
There have been others which are more engaging:
This one is interesting to me. Not simply for its all-star cast but for everything about it. Even those little things like the “回送” (not in service) sign on the bus and the fact everyone is looking off the either side of the frame. It’s just sloppy enough to work and the spatial compression from the 50mm lens creates a feel that is worth exploring.
I believe this too was with a 50mm, hit just right. The fact it is such a fleetingly near miss charges the picture even more. Rather than a shallow comment on the Japanese or Tokyo (like the subway picture) or an experiment in cowardice (snaps of people sleeping) it talks more about Photography itself.
I make a point in the darkroom to take the time and effort into printing at least one image that doesn’t fit with whatever it is I think I’m doing. This is that kind of picture. It’s not “tough” in how it was taken, nor is it all that subtle in terms of costume or locale. Taking pictures of the back of people (on the subway of all places!) isn’t difficult or really very interesting for anyone involved in the process. And yet there is that goddamn eagle that keeps me coming back. Perhaps this is the kind of image that works best as something within a body of work rather that attempting to insist it is Art on its own.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with an editor for a website project of my work. His thoughtful insight has been extremely helpful in forcing (guiding) me in coming to terms with what it is I have been working on this year. He has produced several photo books over the years, including one of Araki’s. I presented a selection of what I thought fit best together only to be told that it looked too in control, too “good”. He suggested that it lacked “noise”, and filler to throw the viewer off guard. If you’ve spent much time with good Japanese photobooks you’ll find that this “noise” is indeed a major component of their structure. Even though it was a shock for a second to be told this, it makes sense. Too pretty, too appropriate, too complete, and too message-oriented is too boring. Here’s to not ever getting bored again.
August 22, 2010
Film vs. Digital
Not at all in the technical sense. Or really even in the aesthetic sense. Definitely not in the Internet Forum sense (or lack of).
Photographing in many cases embeds that particular location into one’s memory. When (mostly accidentally) revisiting these locations shown in the monochrome images, I always have that first memory- both of the moment and experience of taking the picture and the actual print at home in my apartment. I’m not one of those conceptual photographers by any means, but this might be an interesting experiment to continue on with.
Each digital re-photograph is another memory laid over the first.
As photographs though I do prefer the monochrome ones.
