Street Level Japan

There’s going to be a shocking amount of 2011-related Japan photography content showing up here this week. Before that, though, I would like to say that Naoya Hatakeyama’s show “Natural Stories” was the “best” show of the year. I wrote a little bit about it for Tokyo Art Beat’s end of year piece. Marc Feustel wrote about it too.

I recently found some photographs that I really liked. They can’t be seen online yet, but I will be talking about them more in the future. The concept of the series is, what if Japan’s Showa period had never ended, and continued up until the present day? For background: Japan uses the Western style year system (2011) as well as the imperial system (Heisei 23). The title of the work was “Showa 88,” because Showa was the period before Heisei, but this is really not important, Wikipedia has more info if you are interested. The point is that, at the gallery talk, someone asked the photographer: “well, you’re calling this work Showa 88, but 2011 doesn’t translate to Showa 88. This year would actually be Showa 86, and you have a photo of the earthquake damage in your book, so wouldn’t people know that you took it this year.”

To which I dimly thought, but did not formulate in time to say: “What a short-sighted comment, as if there will not be plenty of areas that still look like that in 2013, or 2023…”

ROLLS TOHOKU has been updated with new photos, taken over five days in August. It’s still the only thing worth looking at besides Hatakeyama’s show. Here are some of the photos that stood out to me from this update.

Anonymous woman in Shizukawa:

Kokoa, a girl in Watanoha:

A couple of weeks ago I saw Naoya Hatakeyama’s latest exhibit, “Natural Stories,” at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Photography Museum. Hatakeyama is from Rikuzen-Takada, one of the villages which was devastated by the tsunami this March. I don’t have the time or space here to explain why these photos were so great, but along with ROLLS TOHOKU, they are the only photographs taken of post-3/11 destruction I’ve seen so far which are “good,” strange as it is to use that word here.

With Hatakeyama’s blessing, I took some cell phone shots of the exhibit, but I don’t think it makes any sense to post them here. If you’re in Tokyo, you should go, the exhibit is up through December 4. I think it’s going to travel after that, first to Amsterdam and then maybe eventually San Francisco. I’ll try to keep an eye on the work and see if a book comes out, though I have a feeling that will not happen anytime soon.

I found this link to a 5 part video series hosted by Pharrell, called “Tokyo Rising.” It’s about how the “creative class” (their words not mine!) is on the rebound after 3/11. For maybe obvious reasons, I was pretty skeptical. Could Pharrell really say something meaningful?

As it turns out, yeah. Well, not actually, but that’s not the point. He (or really his production team, but whatever) clearly got in touch with a lot of really good people, and gave them a platform to speak. The founder of Shiroto no Ran, a used furniture store/radical protest group, is featured pretty prominently, but beyond that he also checked out an installation of the Rolls Tohoku project! I didn’t even know about the exhibit myself… damn, scooped by Pharrell in my own backyard.

Event after giving a huge recommendation to Taishi Hirokawa’s “Still Crazy: Nuclear Power Plants As Seen In Japanese Landscapes” in my summer exhibit roundup, I completely forgot about the show and missed out. Quite a bummer, especially because I later heard that Hirokawa was there hanging out at the show.

“Still Crazy” is a 1994 book which shows a crisp landscape photograph of each of Japan’s nuclear power plants—obviously a highly relevant work given all that’s happened recently, and the resurgence of anti-nuclear protests. The book is still available in Japan for the original retail price of about 5000 yen, but now it’s been released as a 600 yen iPad app. (The iTunes link is here.)

via Ken Iseki, there are some more pictures of the app on his blog. (Japanese)

This is a video made by the art collective Chim↑Pom, called “100 Kiai” (“100 Cheers”). It was originally shown in May 2011, as part of an exhibit at Mujin-to Productions called “Real Times.” To make the work shown in “Real Times,” the Chim↑Pom members traveled to the area around the Fukushima reactor.

“100 Kiai” was produced with a number of young guys living in Soma, an area about 50km away from the reactor. As I understand it, one or two of the Chim↑Pom members had just met/seduced these guys and made the video with them soon after. As much as it is obviously important to document what happened (and what is still very much a reality) in Fukushima and Tohoku, I can’t help but be skeptical about a lot of the photographs coming out of the region—are they really helping people? But just showing up in person like this and creating a positive interaction out of thin air is powerful on its own. Its quality as “an artwork” is secondary to the outpouring of catharsis at the end of the video, which you couldn’t convince me is faked in any way.

While probably not as daring as Russia’s Voina, Chim↑Pom are still one of the most radical art groups in Japan. Part of “Real Times” was a video documenting how they altered an extremely famous mural by Taro Okamoto which hangs in Shibuya station; they were later arrested for the “defacement.” This full PBS report has a lot more information to offer, including the text of a nice interview and full clips of the other video pieces in “Real Times.”

This summer, Stockholm’s Fotografiska exhibited the ROLLS TOHOKU project. I don’t want to bore you any more with why I think these photos are by far the “best” to come out of the tsunami so far, I’ll just say that my opinion hasn’t changed.

I think the contact sheet style works well here, to convey as much information as possible. (It also gets the curators out of having to make aesthetic choices, which is a good thing.) The spotlighting seems a little too dramatic, but whatever, ROLLS in Europe yall. I wonder what people thought of it.

This exhibit was coordinated by Marc Feustel of eyecurious fame. It was a proper internet effort though: John Sypal posted the link to ROLLS on Facebook after seeing it on Tumblr, then I emailed it to Marc, who sweet talked the Swedes into making the show happen. Magic.

I’ll continue to try to find out what’s happening with ROLLS and update here if there’s anything.

The following photos are © Michael Björnlycke:

“Tokyo Sky Tree, 11th March 2011,” © Stephen Vaughan

Recently, this blog has been receiving a little bit less attention than normal, as the pull of Twitter grows stronger. It’s deceptively easy to forget that some people not only read Street Level Japan, but have opinions about what’s written here! Among the different types of responses to this blog, the most satisfying might be to receive a comment that not only disagrees with a post, but shows conclusively that it’s incorrect.

This recently happened with the work of Stephen Vaughan, a British photographer about whom I wrote a couple of posts in March. Stephen was in Japan on March 11, working on a long-term project about, of all things, the possibility of a major earthquake. Based on some second-hand information, I wrote a post expressing some disappointment that he had (allegedly) been discouraged by the earthquake, and effectively stopped shooting the project. This is absolutely not the case.

In reality, Stephen traveled to areas in Iwate to photograph the damage caused by the tsunami, as well as an evacuation center. In his own words:

The work that I made in Iwate was driven by a responsibility to bear witness to what had happened. I was totally committed to recording and documenting what I saw with as much depth and clarity as I was able. I am not a photo-journalist in the classic sense (I work with large-format cameras) and there were many other photographers making those kinds of pictures. Instead, I continued to use the visual language that I had established in the project so far, in which the emphasis is on a stilled and descriptive clarity and simplicity.

Some of Stephen’s photographs from Iwate, as well as earlier photographs from this series, can be seen on his website. In my mind, it’s still too early to consider a large body of work on the earthquake, but with time, “A Catfish Sleeps” certainly has the potential to be one of the definitive photographic documents of this disaster. I just hope that the project hasn’t ended.

Update: Stephen says: “I definitely intend to go back to Iwate and Tokyo at some stage, to continue the project. I don’t yet know what form this will take but I won’t be seeking a simple resolution to what has happened.” Also, he’s kindly allowed me to post this link to a 140-page dummy version of “A Catfish Sleeps” on Issu. Definitely worth a look.

Photo taken by Harumi Onodera, an adult in Kesennuma, around May 2011

It’s just about three months on from the earthquake and tsunami, which means that the situation in Tohoku is now well outside of the Western news cycle. Things here in Tokyo also appear to be normal, but this is not a city where you can overhear people’s feelings walking down the street. Everyone knows that things won’t be the same again.

There are a couple of new things to report about the ROLLS TOHOKU project, which I still think has provided some of the best images to come out of this disaster. For one thing, there’s an entirely new set of images online, taken about two months after the tsunami hit. The site is also a bit more user-friendly now; images load much faster and you can use the arrow keys to flip through the slideshows.

Finally, there’s some exciting news for people in Europe, which is that the entire ROLLS project will be exhibited this summer at Fotografiska, Stockholm’s photography museum. The dates are July 7 – August 28. The exhibit is coordinated by Marc Feustel, who also wrote an article about ROLLS which you can read in the recent edition of Foam. or on his blog.

ROLLS TOHOKU is basically the best collection of images to surface from Tohoku, the area of Japan that has been damaged by the tsunami. The concept of the ROLLS project is simple: give people in these areas disposable cameras, have them shoot over the course of a few days, show the unedited results online. In taking a photo of something tragic there’s always the possibility of just turning it into an easily consumable aesthetic object. That’s not at all the case here though. I want to thank the guy who thought of this project, not because I think it’s going to produce the next wave of photo stars but because it is pleasant to see something real.

What’s really excellent about this project is that it tells you if the photographer is an adult or child, and also where they are currently living. I was particularly struck by photos taken by a few different children around Watanoha Elementary School, near Ishinomaki (Google Map here).

There’s a whole range of emotions here, which sometimes are a bit surprising. We can see some friends running around and making faces for the camera in front of piles of debris which have been piled up in the schoolyard. On the one hand I think: kids are kids, put a camera in front of a 12-year-old and they’re damn well going to make a funny face. Still, it seems like they are well aware of what’s happening, so maybe they are just making the best of the situation, “putting one foot in front of the other” and getting on with their lives. In any case, this is essential viewing.

I’ve updated my earlier post with links related to the earthquake, and will continue to add relevant projects as they show up.

Kaho Imai:

Mizuki Atsumi:

Keiya Ustumi:

I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.

Lee Friedlander

A little while ago I heard of someone who was shooting a photo project in Japan, which was a meditation on the idea that a major earthquake could strike here sometime soon. This person had been to Japan a few times before, but as luck would have it, he was actually in the country on March 11—amazing, cosmic timing, right? I was curious to find out what became of the project, but as it turns out, he viewed the earthquake as an imposition; he was annoyed that he couldn’t complete the project as he’d previously envisioned it!

On the one hand, you could say this is a failure to be flexible in one’s thinking. Fair enough. But if the subject of your photography project was the possibility of a major earthquake in Japan, and you were not in Japan when a major earthquake hit, wouldn’t that just drive you up the wall? To actually be in Japan at that time, and effectively throw in the towel, strikes me as a misunderstanding of the medium. Unless you’re working in a studio, it’s not reasonable to expect control over anything—and it’s surprising that someone whose subject was the shifting of tectonic plates would not grasp this! Friedlander’s quote (and work) is perhaps the example of how to keep yourself open—to receive the unexpected not as an obstacle, but as a gift.

© Patrick Tsai

I’ve featured Patrick Tsai a couple of times on this blog before. He got quite a lot of attention a few years ago with his My Little Dead Dick project, which he describes on his website as a “photo diary.” When that project ended, he moved to Tokyo, and I met him shortly after I arrived here a couple of years ago. Since coming to Japan, he’s published a very good zine, “Hot Water,” but it seems like it’s been hard to follow up the success of My Little Dead Dick.

His newest project, though, seems like it will stand up well to his earlier work. What made MLDD so compelling was looking at someone else’s life put on display, and Pat’s new blog, Talking Barnacles, operates in a similar way. What started out as an interview blog has now become a post-earthquake blog, and I’m sure it will turn into other things as well. There’s more writing here, but it’s still a “photo diary.” I try to err on the side of undersharing myself on the internet, but the opposite approach definitely works. I like that he’s turning around his film quickly, and introducing the people in his life. It’s still only a couple of weeks old but it looks promising. Pat said it himself: “after being lost for four years, I finally found my voice again.”

Tokyo is darker than usual, which contrasts with the excitement I feel about being here. I will continue to write about photography here and other places – I’ve got a nice post lined up for La Pura Vida. About an hour before the earthquake hit I became a full time freelancer, so if you have any writing or web design gigs, please get in touch. Contact info to the left.

© Coco Young

In this post I’m linking to some photographs related to the earthquake. There are two groups here, journalistic photographs of the damage in Tohoku, and snapshots taken by photographers in Tokyo. How much the earthquake shows up on this blog will depend on the response it provokes from photographers here. Of course it will be significant, but powerful work may not emerge immediately—Richard Misrach’s excellent post-Katrina book “Destroy This Memory“ just came out last year. I heard that Naoki Ishikawa is up in Tohoku shooting right now. If that’s true, it’s a good sign.

Photojournalistic links

Andrew Burton was in Tohoku on assignment for USA Today. He wrote a thoughtful post examining his own practice of “parachuting” in and out of disaster sites around the world. Some photos of his last day are in this post, more if you click around.

James Nachtwey for TIME. There are words and photos here; they’re both overwrought the pictures generally let the scale of the disaster speak for itself.

An LPV edit of photos taken on the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s “Operation Tomodachi,” its rescue mission to Tohoku.

Photographer links

Coco Young: Some really good posts on her blog of snapshots taken around Tokyo after the earthquake.

Shin Suzuki: Atmospheric photos of Tokyo from the day of the quake.

Patrick Tsai: A diary, with some pictures, of his first week after the earthquake.

John Sypal: Scans from a roll he shot on a five hour walk home after getting stranded.

Charlie Kirk: Unsettling photos of people looking worried in Tokyo.

Bonus radiation link

Nice graphs about current radiation levels. No need for alarm!

Update 4/15/11:

ROLLS TOHOKU is a project where a photographer gave disposable cameras to people (including children) living in areas affected by the tsunami. The photos are now online, and they provide a perspective on the events in Tohoku which photojournalists probably cannot.

A series of AP images showing family photographs that have been recovered, and how they’re being displayed in gyms so people can find them again.

Update 4/19/11:

Some more images from photojournalists:

Jake Price for the BBC. Interesting comments, he’s taken a small beating here for shooting photos like Nachtwey’s.

Dominic Nahr for TIME, this falls into many of the traps of disaster photography.

Very thoughtful post from Ikuru Kuwajima, a Japanese photojournalist who has lived outside of Japan for the last 8 years. Recommended.

I’m taking refuge in Seoul right now with my girlfriend, who is Korean. The first day here I resolved to avoid Japan-related news, a policy which ended up carrying over to the second day. After the post-quake stress, it was necessary to unwind—and I mean this in an almost literal way. An hour or so after the earthquake hit, as the gravity of the situation became apparent, adrenaline took over and did not let up for days. Living in this state twisted my thoughts and crippled my decision making. Booking this flight out put me at ease, but even then I couldn’t believe what I was doing, I almost talked myself out of it. There is something exciting about this time, when the city becomes a wild place. The aftershocks were not reason enough to leave, but the situation in Fukushima really poked a hole in the quasi-romantic, urban camping fantasy of holing up in one’s apartment with food and batteries.

The problem with the situation in Fukushima is that the quality of information is so poor. It’s hard to trust what TEPCO and the government is saying, but it’s equally hard to believe that someone in Washington really knows what’s going on either. It’s incredible that even with the full attention of the world’s media on a tiny area, we are still in the realm of speculation. Cameron Allan McKean is writing as clearly as possible about this experience. He’s around Osaka right now, having left Tokyo a few days ago.

Cameron said this as well, but what we really want is to go back to Tokyo. After the mental break of the first two days in Seoul, we’re starting to live in reality again: reading the news, thinking about Tokyo, talking about when we might be able to return. Although we’ve unwound from the stress of the earthquake, we’re not at all back to normal. It’s my sneaking feeling that things may be the same for Tokyo.

The photo is from Tokyo’s Yushima Station, at about 7pm, a few hours after the earthquake.

A couple of weeks ago Marc emailed me a link to some work by Stephen Vaughan, a British photographer who is working on a project about the relationship between geologic activity and civilization in Japan. It’s called “The Catfish Sleeps.” The work struck me as way too vague, but it’s certainly timely, and he was supposed to be coming to Japan sometime this month. It’s definitely make or break time for his project!

I assume that by now you are aware of the earthquake that’s hit Japan. I’m OK for now, I am in my apartment in Tokyo with my girlfriend and a bunch of food. It’s difficult to know how scared we should be, which I think makes things scarier. Watching the news on TV increases my own hysteria, so I’m giving that a break for a moment. The things I’ve read in the past hour about the nuclear reactor link have been more positive, which is nice of course. Still, it hasn’t even been two days, so many people here are on edge.

Anyway, two series have come to mind in the past couple of days. The first is Ryuji Miyamoto’s photographs taken after the 1995 earthquake in Kansai. Some photos are here and here. The second is Robert Polidori’s “Zones of Exclusion,” which is a project he made at Chernobyl. Some photos are here, though I’m honestly not searching that hard right now.