I’m pleased to announce the first title published by MCVMCV, Emi Fukuyama’s “A Trip to Europe.” It’s a small book of photos that Emi took in 2009, while spending a month or so in Germany, France and the Czech Republic. It costs ¥1500 (including worldwide shipping), and you can see more information about it here.
It’s taken well over a year to produce this book, as the project took a couple of different forms. I’m glad to have it out, and I’m looking forward to the next MCVMCV projects. In general, the desire to publish books is similar to the reason for writing this blog, namely to introduce foreign countries to Japanese photography—especially when it’s on a level (street level??) that might otherwise go unknown. Aperture is there to support Rinko Kawauchi, and this is a good thing, but who is supporting Emi?
I’ve recently been reminded of Winogrand’s famous quotation, “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” He’s talking in terms of experimentation, and that’s how I see this publishing project. I want to find out what happens when I push the work I’m seeing here out into the world.
If you don’t already know Hiroh Kikai’s work, or just want to see a bunch of it in one place, check out this blog post with a whole bunch of his black and white portraits. His show at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Photography is up now until October 2.
John posted some nice photos of an exhibit called “The Beach,” by Reiichi Murakami. On his recommendation I went and checked it out, and I enjoyed it. I think it might be the pinnacle of Japanese amateur photography: while it goes off in a few different directions, Murakami spent 10 years putting it together, and the overall quality really comes through.
Still, a funny thing happened in the gallery, where Murakami’s show was being displayed next to some (“breathtaking” I assume) photos of nature:
No one else was looking at Murakami’s work, except for one guy…
…using the exhibition space as a place to sit down and flip through a catalog! Oh well.
In his post, John highlighted group photos. I liked Murakami’s solo portraits:
You may have seen the trailer for the film “How to Make a Book With Steidl,” which looks like essential viewing for people interested in photobooks. (Despite being posted on some “major” blogs, the trailer only has 10,000 views, which I guess says something about the overall popularity of the field.) I haven’t seen the movie yet, but last week I went with Tosei-sha’s Takahashi Kunihiro to watch him make Deguchi Kozue’s book “緑絽” (Ryokuro), or loosely translated, “Green Gauze.” Takahashi-san uses a couple of different printing companies, but this time a small group of us piled into his van and drove to Tokyo’s Toppan Insatsu (凸版印刷), one of the largest printing presses in Japan.
Takahashi-san has made a name for himself as a master black and white printer: he’s been doing it for 20 years, and his trademark move is blending the black and gray inks himself. For this book, he used a black ink containing 60% red and 40% blue, and a gray ink with 5 different colors that I’ve completely forgotten. I say “the black had 60% red and 40% blue,” but I’m not really sure what that means technically. Obviously the ink looks black, but I don’t know if we’re talking about blue “hues” or “pigments” here.
Deguchi’s book has 50 images on 100 pages, so the goal for this day was for her to sign off on 7 sheets, each containing 4 images. Deguchi and Takahashi would then go back the next day to finish up the rest. In the photo above, Deguchi and Takahashi are reviewing a test sheet, literally hot off the press, with the print operators. If there are any adjustments to be made, the operators will come back about 15 minutes later with the next version.
The pensive-looking Italian gentleman in the right of this photo is Pierfrancesco Celada, who was here working on a long-term project on Japanese cities. His site is worth visiting, he has a very good eye.
I didn’t realize this, but to make something appear brighter on the page, you actually add black to it. Say that you have something that’s 10% white and 90% black. The difference between the two is 80%. If you double the black, then you have 20% and 180%, which makes for a much bigger difference. There’s actually more black there, but the eye perceives it as being more white. This is all according to Takahashi-san at least, the numbers sound a bit sketchy but I think that perhaps the percentage shouldn’t be taken too literally.
The workstation on the factory floor. Here’s a video showing the printing machine whirring up and sending the sheets through. As it got going, the head of the department said to me, “man, I never get tired of watching this…”
With this machine, you can bump up the ink levels, limiting the affected area to only a certain part of the sheet. The control isn’t pixel-level, of course.
The black knobs here correspond to the levels that were set on the machine above.
These are the plates for the black and gray ink. They’re flexible, so that they can grab the ink, then roll it on to a rubber roller, which in turn rolls it on to the paper.
That’s Deguchi-san on the left, and Tomomi Matsutani on the right. Matsutani-san is a young photographer who has published a couple of interesting zines, and helped run Onaka Koji’s Gallery Kaido during 2010.
Takahashi-san looks like he’s having a miserable time here, but that’s not the case at all. The whole day was stress-free, and even though there’s a lot of downtime waiting for the revisions to come back, there was good banter back and forth between everyone to keep things interesting.
I featured Tayama Koyuki a while ago, and now she’s holding a solo show at Totem Pole Photo Gallery which is up until March 13. I realize that it’s not always so useful to write about current Tokyo exhibitions, but I have to write about this show: it’s the best thing I’ve seen in months. If you’re around Tokyo now, I can’t recommend it enough.
Tayama recently graduated from Tokyo Zokei University, and thie show is her senior project. I think her photographs—black and white, ambiguous, full of visual pleasure—are very strong on their own, but what really blew me away is the series of entirely handmade books that accompany the exhibit. I’m down with Xeroxed zines, but these are something else. The production value is really high, as she’s gone and perfect bound each book herself. (It’s a two-day process to create one book.) The book version of “Ariadne” only costs 1500 yen (roughly $18) which I think is incredible given the amount of effort that went into it.
We’re starting to hear more and more about the self-publishing boom here in Tokyo, and while zines are becoming more popular, this is something really exciting. Who knows if it will take off, but for now I’d just suggest enjoying it.
田山湖雪は何ヶ月前ブログをしたけど、いまTotem Pole Photo Galleryで個人展をしています。2011の今までの一番いい展示です。田山の作品は上手だけど、彼女は自分で本を作ります。この本は、全く普通のものじゃない。見に行った方がいいと思います！
Photos from Osaka that Nate Shockey took over a few days last summer. Although he’s now in New York City, Nate has lived in the Kansai (Kyoto/Osaka/Wakayama) area a number of times over the past 10 years.
Koyuki Tayama (田山湖雪) is a photography graduate student at Tokyo Zokei University, home to fellow Tumblr user and Street Level Japan alumnus Lee Kan-kyo. I met Tayama in “real life,” so it was to strange to ask her if she knew this graphic design grad student at her university whose blog I had found through a friend living in San Francisco. But yeah, she knows Lee, and reports that he is “thin.”
I thought Lee’s photographs were worth blogging because he seems to be getting himself into interesting locations (outside of Tokyo) and making basically decent photographs. Tayama’s photographs are sort of the opposite; the places she’s in aren’t made to look all that interesting in themselves, but she makes something photographic out of them. I’m curious to see what direction her work will go from here.
I have started something which, when it’s finished, should give a material form to the things I have been thinking about and working on since I got here.
It almost seems like Vivian Maier’s photographs are coming to light by pure chance—“I acquired Vivian’s negatives while at a furniture and antique auction,” wrote the man who bought them. She’s been unknown until now, but a default template Blogger blog is certainly changing that.
She was born in France but lived most of her life in Chicago, where she took photos. This is the really the most exciting thing I’ve seen online in a while. There are more details to come about Maier’s life, but it’s compelling to watch this unfold. It’s interesting to compare this to what you see linked up on BOOOOOOOOM…
Short version of this post: check out the show by Arata Masuda over at Konica Minolta Plaza in Shinjuku. [map] It’s called “Rooftop Paradise,” and it’s up until October 23. I highly recommend it.
I went to meet a friend in Shinjuku today, but I got there a bit early so I decided to see what was up at Konica Minolta Plaza, one of the many “maker” galleries in Tokyo, along with other spaces run by Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Ricoh, Fuji and Epson. (!) I didn’t know what was there, but Konica Minolta is always hit and miss, which is actually a step up from most of the other maker galleries which are usually full of junk.
As it happens, Monday the gallery is actually closed, but I “misunderstood” a sign outside the elevator and walked in, where the Arata exhibit was already set up. I made one pass of the exhibit, which I hastened when I heard some whispering outside to the effect of “some crazy foreigner just walked in” “foreigner?” “yes a foreigner.”
I’ll definitely going back for a slower look, because the photos are great. Arata went to the rooftops of department stores and found some incredible images there. The show is big, so not everything hits the mark, but in many cases he finds a balanced composition between people, buildings, trees and whatever else happens to be on top of department stores. This composition reminds me of Gocho Shigeo, who might be one of my favorites:
This image of Gocho’s is one of the only ones I could find online but no matter. If you’re in Shinjuku over the next couple of weeks, stop by and check the Arata show out.
I made this print at a rental darkroom in Tokyo a few months ago, but I’m looking for an enlarger so I can do all this stuff from the comfort (?) of my own apartment. If you are in Tokyo and have a beat on a spare enlarger, please get in touch.
She went in the rooms after the couples had left. That access is impressive, given how important privacy is to these businesses, at least in Japan. The series works as a whole, but strangely I really want to see this in color.
My friend Phillip took this picture of me at a top secret spot in Tokyo where the light you’re seeing is “naturally occurring.”
Philip is a photography student at San Jose State, and he was in Japan for a month long program this summer. I can’t imagine there’s a better place to spend a month as a photography student than Japan…
My friend John sent me a link to Mika Kitamura’s site a few weeks ago. There’s a lot of work up there, but I liked her series “?????????” or “From one roll of film” the best. Looking at the work by Fukuyama Emi and Yamashita Tsuneo has been pushing me towards more empty compositions, and these photos make me think along the same lines.
As it happens, the first five photos on 415Kurt’s photostream strike me in the same way as this other work. They are night shots of San Francisco houses with a strong feeling for the city.
This post comes late, but there are still a few more days left to check out the “Japan: Self Portait” exhibit at the Setagaya Art Museum. The exhibit is a survey of postwar Japanese photography. Here’s the link to the Tokyo Art Beat entry, which includes all the information you’d need to make it out. (I suggest a bike ride to the park, if possible.)
Tadahiko Hayashi, “Return of Ginza-bura,” 1950. This looks about 500 times better in real life
Apart from the pleasure of walking through many comfortably large rooms of black and white photographs, I enjoyed thinking about different contexts for viewing a photograph. Some of these pictures could have been tossed off by the photographer, without much thought towards history, but now we might read something much different in them.
The current show at Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Emi Fukuyama’s “Followed By the Moon 4,” is really worth seeing if you’re in Tokyo during the next week. (It closes Sunday June 21.) Totem Pole is one of the strongest galleries in Tokyo, but this exhibition might be the best I’ve seen there.
a photo by Emi Fukuyama, from a previous show
The photographs in this show are all taken from positions that my friend called “awkward”—he pointed out that in almost each image, there’s something blurred in the foreground. This could be distracting, but the resistance draws your eye in to the rest of the frame, where something’s waiting for you, like umbrellas hanging outside an apartment, or chairs by a pool. The consistently expressive composition and lush black-and-white printing makes for a strong mood from start to finish. My friend and I walked out wanting to shoot a lot, which is a sign of a winning show.
Please enjoy, and let me know if you make it out, I’m curious to hear other responses.
the blog world is still so new! the current stars are skilled at putting on a grand show, like chaplin. who knows, maybe even the more thoughtful ones (keaton, in my image) won’t survive the next wave…
i used a darkroom today. i like black and white film because i think it’s EASY. today i made four contact sheets and four prints. none of the prints are ready to be exhibited, 3 are not centered properly on the paper, but in all of last YEAR, even with my scanner, i made probably no more than 15 prints, which was the whole idea of getting it in the first place. scanning is such pain, everything is guesswork! “how’s the calibration of my monitor, how’s the calibration of the lab’s printer, if i move this curve 5 pixels down does the photo actually look better, and WHY IS IT THAT walgreens almost makes my color film look better anyway…” not to mention the soul-crushing tedium of scanning. the darkroom is simple and rewarding.
FEEL ME FLOW
i also saw araki’s latest show today. it’s called Araki 69, he’s turning 69 years old and he shot it with a 6×9 camera. i would say the photos are like “Araki photos made with a 6×9 camera,” in other words he translated his style accurately to the format. here’s an interesting interview with Araki, it makes me feel a bit ashamed for having so little to say about him WHEN HE’S PUBLISHED 450 BOOKS, if that’s even true. “Kofuku Shashin” sounds interesting, though.
Sokyu-sha is one of the many galleries which are around Shinjuku Gyoen, a nicely manicured park in the middle of Shinjuku. To the side of the gallery space is one of the most interesting photography bookstores in Tokyo. It’s not the biggest, but it has a really strong selection of black and white books, including many publications which I haven’t seen anywhere else. Let’s take a look.
In the middle is a long table, which is mostly full of high-level, more recent books. Older stuff is on the shelves
Requisite issues of Moriyama’s “Record” series. Still managed to pass up the Osaka one, which is on the right here
A bookcase full of what I assume is photography history and criticism. I can speak a reasonable amount of Japanese but kanji is still beyond me
Here’s where Sokyu-sha really shines. These are issues of a small photography publication which I’ve never seen before
I bought the issues of “LP” for 500yen each, and the white book on the left. This book is amazing and only cost 1000yen, I will write about it later
Not exactly zines, but tiny publications printed on cheap paper which are mostly text. Still interesting, and again, I don’t know yet where else to find this kind of thing
I just saw this series by RJ Shaughnessy called “Your Golden Opportunity Is Comeing Very Soon.” I’m digging it a lot, lately I’ve been taking pictures of the textures in Tokyo and this really resonates. Simple and effective, shoot on!
There is a talk by Kenya Hara, art director of MUJI, in which he explains why he thinks that Japanese culture (!) should be thought of as valuing “emptiness,” rather than “simplicity.” This distinction can be traced all the way back to the construction of a Shinto shrine, which at its center is always an empty space enclosed by four pillars, bound at the top with straw. The building around this space is not all that important. The empty space is more valuable, because it offers the possibility of being filled.
To cite Hara’s more modern example, we can look at the design of knives from America and Japan. The handle of an American knife might have a molded grip, which means it can be held in only one way. That’s simple. A Japanese knife, though, will have a cylindrical handle, which can accommodate whatever style the cook may wish to use. Hara calls this knife empty.
The photographs in Yamashita Tsuneo’s “Another time on the Ryuku Islands” made me think of that talk. I wanted to call his photographs “simple,” but maybe I should say that they’re empty. What does this mean? The photos are a vehicle for transmitting the experience of being on the islands. Like the building around a shrine, they’re not actually that important. You might forget that you are looking at photographs.
Walking around the exhibit, I felt connected to this place in Okinawa. It’s strange to say, but a close up photograph of a large, still-wet squid lying on a wooden table gave me the impression of what the air on the Ryuku islands would feel like.
I can’t guarantee that you will have a similar experience, but perhaps if you go to the gallery without thinking very much, you’ll feel the same way.
The exhibit is at the Tosei-sha gallery in Nakano-ku, and will be up until the end of June. Here’s a map to the gallery. The staff at Tosei-sha is by far the friendliest I have met in Tokyo, and there are a number of good books out front, some of which they have also published.
