Street Level Japan

I enjoyed Mu Ge’s January exhibit at Zen Foto Gallery, “Go Home.” Now in March, Zen Foto is showing “Still Lake” by Liu Ke (劉珂), another photographer from Chongqing who also takes 6×6 photos by its rivers. (The two photographers are friends in real life.) Although their work is naturally close, the differences between them go beyond the fact that Mu Ge uses black and white and Liu Ke uses color.

Most of Liu Ke’s photos can be placed into one of three groups: portraits, conditions (i.e. of Chongqing) and abstractions. Mu Ge’s work consists mostly of these first two categories, and I think that right now, his portraits are stronger than Liu Ke’s. As for “conditions,” this is where the two are closest—each show human activity at the scene of Chongqing’s rivers.

But the abstractions are where Liu Ke breaks from Mu Ge: at times, he forces a strong composition on his material. The image of a lone bus in an otherwise empty scene is compelling, and it wouldn’t have any place in Mu Ge’s world.

The bus is actually one of the strongest motifs running through Liu Ke’s work, and it becomes another backdrop against which to observe people. The photos of people sitting on buses are some of the best photos in Liu Ke’s portfolio. They’re often craning their necks out the window, looking towards something that’s hidden from the viewer.

There can be a lot of ambiguity with Liu Ke. Why is this shopkeeper covering his face? And what’s happening on TV?

I don’t think it’s coincidental that this photo was taken away from the river. It seems as though if you’re in Chongqing and take a photo of something by the river, there’s a good chance that an unexpected element—power lines, a boat, a half destroyed building—will creep into the frame, just due to the loose distribution of human material in this area.

Liu Ke’s work is actually weaker when it asks this material to carry the weight of his photos; the ineffective image of a woman walking on a dam comes to mind here. By contrast, the shot of fireworks through a window creates a very strong impression. As Liu Ke looks away from the river, he develops a personal and thoughtful style which is certainly worth following. I recommend looking at his prints and portfolios, which will be up until March 24 at Zen Foto.

Is anyone using Google Buzz? Right now I’m less interested in it as a social platform, and more as a way of having private discussions. I am thinking of cultivating a small Buzz group to talk about photography things. If you’d be interested let me know, either in the comments or by email: dan [at] mcvmcv dot net

I am working on a longer post about Fujioka Aya, but here’s a link to a Japan Exposures post I did with John Sypal about her recent book “I Don’t Sleep.” Japan Exposures is also hosting a gallery of her work.

I met Takiguchi Koji at an event last week and was really impressed by his newest series “PEEP.” I think it takes a special photographer to make an entire series of portraits hold the attention well, but “PEEP” is very compelling—at times hilarious, at times tragic, but never boring.

I’m talking with Takiguchi-san to see about featuring some of his work here, but in the meantime I’m highly recommending a visit to his website.

On the subject of new Tumblrs, and the challenge of broadcasting Japanese photo culture through the internet:

Japan Exposures has just made an impressive social media push, both on Twitter and Tumblr. Like Aya Takada’s Tumblr, these accounts are essential following to know what’s happening with Japanese photography. I’m blown away by the amount of interesting links passing through JE’s Twitter account, will there ever be an end?

Conscientious wrote an internet blog post about Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima and had the chutzpah to call it a “review.” Let’s think about whether this is deserved. Here’s the first sentence of the post:

“The 20th Century was filled to the brim with atrocities, war, and genocide.”

O rly? It would make just as much sense to write a sentence beginning with “Since time immemorial,” or “Throughout history.” Either way, this is a cliche. First sentence of second paragraph:

“Photographers have a long tradition of trying to deal with suffering, to try to convey what it might have meant for those who perished.”

Again, this doesn’t really mean anything, and it could be equally true of painting or sculpture or literature. We still haven’t heard about the work at all, but that’s coming in the next paragraph:

“Miyako Ishiuchi’s Hiroshima, which I first heard about through Marc and which I just found in a Japanese book shop, is another example. Hiroshima shows clothing and personal items worn by victims of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. There are about 19,000 such items in the collection of the city’s Peace Memorial Museum, and the book presents a tiny fraction of these. At the very end of the book, there is a list of the presented items, along with the names of the victims (where they are known).”

So now we know what’s in the book. And the photos themselves, pray tell? Maybe the next and final paragraph will tell us:

“It is left to the viewer to deal with the images, there is no further text (apart from a short statement by the photographer), no explanations, no descriptions. Where words must fail, can images tell us something? I think they can, once we realize that what they might tell us is what we are able to tell ourselves.”

Oh. Actually, as you now understand, it’s left for someone other than the writer to “deal” with the images.

So, where’s the beef here? Why is there no engagement with the work? What makes these muddled thoughts a “review”? At some minimal level, shouldn’t a review communicate the writer’s impressions of the thing they are claiming to tell us about? “Once we realize that what they might tell us is what we are able to tell ourselves”—what does this even mean? Can anyone parse that sentence? (In all fairness it could just contain a typo)

Beyond this one review, why do so many people continually reaffirm the authority of this writing? Online, any blogger can say “this is a review” (”I am a curator“), and the responsibility of deciding whether to take this statement at face value falls on the audience. How will this audience lose its sheep-like qualities, when acting in bad faith—saying nothing means saying “yes”—is so much easier?

This post was a missed opportunity, because it’s worth saying something (anything!) about Ishiuchi’s photographs. She manages the difficult task of conveying the scale of the atomic bomb’s effect without beating the viewer over the head. The entire book is photographs of clothing and mundane objects recovered from Hiroshima (yo this is a link to a site where you can see a number of these images), and I have to admit that when it was described to me verbally I imagined that the work might have been cold, if not even boring. But this isn’t the case at all.

Ishiuchi’s presentation of these objects makes a quiet but clear statement about the magnitude of the atomic bomb. Each thing is recognizable, but has some visible sign of destruction. Ishiuchi photographed these objects against a plain background, and by removing any kind of identifying context, the viewer has to imagine how their particular kind of damage came about. In some cases, it’s possible to make out obvious burn marks, but others are less clear: the fabric of one garment has an eerie lightness to it which certainly did not come from overuse. A schoolgirl’s uniform with alien-looking holes ripped clear through it doesn’t need an explanation.

It’s not easy viewing, but Hiroshima is a carefully considered portrait of August 6 which is well worth seeking out.

NB: Marc Feustel’s post about photographic responses to Hiroshima is a good read for more on this subject. Also, August 6 falls around Japan’s obon week, a festival to remember the dead. I rarely have extended conversations about World War II here in Japan, but I was struck by how often the topic came up during that time, and I saw Hiroshima in that context.

A commenter recently suggested that photoblogs might be a good way for people outside of Japan to get a feel for what’s going on here. Photoblogs and “blog blogs” written by Japanese photographers definitely exist, but I think by and large they are independent and personal (if not almost private) endeavors; not many Japanese photographers have taken to social media.

With that in mind, I want to heartily direct you to Aya Takada’s new Tumblr. Aya is a thoughtful photographer with a deep and personal knowledge of Japanese photography, especially the Shinjuku street scene. She is in tune with online media (she’s an active Twitter user too), and so far she’s posted a number of interesting things I hadn’t seen before. These kinds of sites both need and deserve your attention.

I thought Japan Exposures’ book preview videos showing books were a good way to show off books online, but this video is a step beyond that – a proper trailer for a book. It’s certainly intended to go viral, and I’d say job well done. If you do watch this video you need to give it a minute.