Street Level Japan

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.

I would characterize a lot of my blogging from last year as a report of getting my bearings in Tokyo; hence the posts about stores, galleries and other things “on the ground.” At this point, I’m more interested in writing about the work that’s being produced here, and the culture supporting it. Above all, I want to think about the dialog between Japanese photography and foreign (especially Western) countries, and to add something productive to this conversation.

Anyone who visits Japan in general, and Tokyo in particular, will be struck by the level of photographic activity here: it bears repeating that the sheer number of photo magazines, camera stores, photography-focused galleries and bookstores, not to mention photographers, is impressive on its own. Yet for all of this activity—happening at “street level,” let’s say—very little of it is transmitted* abroad.

When I went back to San Francisco around New Year’s, I spoke to someone who works with Japanese photography in a professional capacity. This person said that they got most of their information about photography in Japan by hearing about or seeing exhibits in America. This seems obviously problematic: reaching an American gallery requires a level of backing available only to a few photographers. It shouldn’t be that hard for Japanese photographers to reach an American (or British or…) audience, especially when so much compelling work is being produced here.

This blog is not a crusade on behalf of Japanese photography as if it were a greatly neglected photographic tradition. Foreign audiences are already quite familiar with at least a few Japanese photographers—usually men born before 1940. These names (Moriyama, Araki, Tomatsu, Hosoe, Kimura, etc) shouldn’t be ignored, but I would like to move forward positively from this base. Let’s keep our eyes open.

*I have no special knowledge of Japanese culture, and no interest in speaking about the “Japanese-ness” of anything. The farther I can distance myself from any kind of cultural “translation” the better. Whatever I write here is going to be distorted by my own experience in Japan, but I want to focus on presenting things as clearly as possible—“transmit” instead of “interpret.” For armchair cultural analysis you can read pretty much any other blog about Japan! (edit: tokyo damage report and mutantfrog travelogue are exceptionally good though)

I came to Japan at the start of 2009, and I can’t wait for 2010. Stick around, good things are on the way.

Exhibits

Yamashita Tsuneo, “Another Time On The Ryuku Islands” (Tosei-sha Gallery)
This show stayed with me longer than any other I saw this year. The quality and selection of the prints really drew me in, and I was surprised to find that seemingly simple images held my attention for longer than I would have expected. This work strikes me as currently unfashionable but confident; I would not be surprised to see Yamashita-san find a larger audience. [full review]

Fukuyama Emi, “Following the Moon 3” (Totem Pole Photo Gallery)
I’ve heard quite a few people say that if Fukuyama-san keeps up the work she’s been doing, she’ll have a very bright future. I definitely agree. [full review]

Asada Masashi, “Asadake” (Konica Minolta Plaza)
This exhibit got the best audience reaction out of anything I saw, with good reason. [full review on Japan Exposures]

“Travel” exhibit part 3: ‘Travel Abroad’ (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)
Exhibits here run hot and cold, but this one was a real success. The curators gave roughly 10 photographers ample space to express themselves, using photographs taken outside of Japan. Miki Jun and Kimura Ihee (working in Baton Rouge and Paris, respectively) made the strongest impression on me.

Ota Takumi, “Core” (Totem Pole Photo Gallery)
Expressive, large-format color work that really caught my eye. [full review]

Photobooks

Abe Jun, “Citizens” (Vacuum Press)
Black and white street photography magic from Osaka around 1980. It’s nothing less than a tour de force, you could liken him to a Japanese Garry Winogrand – see the images on John Sypal’s blog for more.

Noguchi Yasuko, “Sakurabito” (Vacuum Press)
Really, a special book, which I should have mentioned earlier. In a way it’s a partner to “Citizens,” but taken over the past few years, with a slower pace. I think this book will age well, as a clear portrait of late 00’s Osaka.

Fujioka Aya, “I Don’t Sleep” (Akaaka-sha)
Akaaka puts out a lot of books that could easily be called “interesting,” but this one goes beyond that description. “I Don’t Sleep” takes the viewer through a highly personal journey with the photographer’s mother, with unexpected detours along the way. I only recently saw this beautifully printed and edited book, which needs a proper review.

These two books weren’t printed in 2009, but…
Ed Panar, “Golden Palms“ (J&L): Along with finding a lab that can process and scan a roll of film for 300 yen, this book was a big reason for wanting to shoot with color film again.
Tsuchida Hiromi, “Zokushin” (Tosei-sha): I got it late in the year, and I don’t know how I lived without it. For now, at least, my photographic bible.

Websites

I put many a photoblog in a purgatory folder wihin my RSS reader, but I still closely follow these three blogs about photography culture in Japan.

Japan Exposures, for wide-ranging commentary on Japanese photo culture
eyecurious, for high-minded but extraordinarily clear writing about photography in general, with a focus on Japan in particular
_valerian, for the real “street level” excitement of living and taking photos in Tokyo

YouTube Videos

You only need to see one OK:

Kool Keith talking about how to stock a refrigerator

Here is a link to the full text, in PDF form, of Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason. If you have any inclination to read contemporary philosophy I can recommend it very highly. Sloterdijk is much easier to understand, and much more direct in his style, than most other continental philosophy cats. He’s amoral but life-affirming—just how I like my philosophers! The only technical term he leans on is kynicism, which refers to the Greek version of joyful, “cheeky” cynicism, rather than the negative cynicism we know today. Diogenes, a brash philosopher of Plato’s time, is the original kynic.

This is an excerpt from the text:

Before we “really live,” we always have just one more matter to attend to, just one more precondition to fulfill, just one more temporarily more important wish to satisfy, just one more account to settle. And with this just one more and one more time arises that structure of postponement and indirect living that keeps the system of excessive production going on. The latter, of course, always knows how to present itself as an unconditionally “good end” that deludes us with its light as though it were a real goal but that whenever we approach it recedes once more into the distance.

Kynical reason culminates in the knowledge—decried as nihilism—that we must snub the grand goals. In this regard, we cannot be nihilistic enough. Those who reject all so-called goals and values in a kynical sense break through the circle of instrumental reason, in which “good” goals are pursued with “bad” means. The means lie in our hands, and they are means with such enormous significance (in every respect: production, organization, as well as destruction) that we must begin to ask ourselves whether there can still be any ends that are served by the means. For what good could such immeasurable means be necessary? In that moment when our consciousness becomes ripe to let go of the idea of good as a goal and to devote itself to what is already there, a release is possible in which the piling up of means for imaginary, always receding goals automatically becomes superfluous. Cynicism can only be stemmed by kynicism, not by morality. Only a joyful kynicism of ends is never tempted to forget that life has nothing to lose except itself.

buy from Abebooks

3125

You Li

I added a China section to the links on the right side of the page, because I’m seeing a lot of good things there. Definitely look at Jia Za Zhi (Fake Magazine) to keep up with what’s happening.

Next year in Shanghai? Well, I’d like to visit…