Street Level Japan

So much radness is available through the Hamburger Eyes EYELAND AUCTIONS store on eBay. It’s a fundraising auction, I really encourage you to support! All of the following things are available, plus lots more, you can click on the image and go right to its eBay page.

© Alex Martinez

© Andrea Sonnenberg

© Ted Pushinsky

© Michael Jang

this one was featured in Hamburger Eyes #12. check it

A past issue of Hamburger Eyes featured some really interesting photos from 1980s San Francisco by Michael Jang. Now WIRED has done an interview with him – that’s nice they chose to talk to someone in their own backyard! I didn’t know much about Michael Jang before I read the interview, but he seems to embody the healthiest parts of San Francisco culture, like a distrust of institutions and a willingness to try new things.

“Well, why would you [pursue galley shows]? Ego. If I haven’t had it in 30 years I don’t need my name out there. That’s a major drive for a lot of people who want a career. I can pick and choose what I want to do. We’ve all been to art gallery shows and it’s kind of a scene. Think about that. Why would you want to run your whole life for that? […] You get this freedom when you don’t have a reputation, you can do whatever you want.”

Jang’s latest project is shooting pictures of teenage garage bands. Read the whole thing to hear about the challenges this presented, and a story about shooting Castro’s army in Cuba.

“I like danger too because I need to get my adrenaline going sometimes so I like to go where it’s not totally right or welcome. It just makes me think, okay, good, I’m definitely pushing it.”

link via weakmassive

There’s an interesting experiment online right now. Actually, it’s not really “interesting” so much as “vital,” as in, “it is vital that this experiment goes well.”

Hamburger Eyes needs $3000 to put out their next issue—who can blame them—so they’ve set up a page where you can donate, and track their progress. If you donate $15, you get a copy of Issue 13… which you were going to buy anyway, right? This is a chance for people on the internet to stand up and be counted. I’ve been passing up on a lot of books lately but I had to put some Yen behind this one.

Sitting in my apartment a few days ago, I felt a strong desire to look at Hamburger Eyes, a San Francisco photo magazine. (The SF photo magazine.) Maybe I could have found a few images online, but I wanted to hold the printed article in my hands. It’s funny to think I was so cynical about Hamburger Eyes when I first started writing about it. Now I can’t think of anything fresher, pick it up if you don’t have it yet.

so i did find stuff online but how good is this really to look at?

I was going to Shibuya so I stopped off at my favorite place to kill time there, LOGOS bookstore. Shibuya is always a zoo, and LOGOS is a good place to take a mental break. (As it happened, they were showing off a bunch of Daido Moriyama stuff.) I wasn’t thinking about chasing down Hamburger Eyes, I just wanted to flip through some photo books and magazines. Once I got there and started poking around, though, I remembered that I’d seen Hamburger Eyes there before. Sure enough, the pride of SF was still in stock.

It’s enjoyable to pick up a copy of a book that you already own, but haven’t seen in a while. This time I enjoyed looking at “Most Beautiful Apes,” a series of photos from San Francisco in the 1970s. Stefan Simikich’s snapshots really grabbed me too. Hamburger Eyes is totally wide open, there’s no visual dogma but you can see a common spirit behind the photos, like a really intense curiosity which could lead you anywhere. It felt good to look at, and I was ready to delve into the rest of what LOGOS had to offer.

a spread of “Most Beautiful Apes” by Michael Jang

One shelf down, “I Heart Magazine,” an NYC publication which has the words “Street Photography” printed on the cover. This is sort of cool, but the question “what is street photography?” isn’t one that can be answered so easily, as these discussions will show. So this didn’t really bode well, and the stuff inside looks all the same, as if the photographers were working from some template of what a “street photograph” should look like, namely: between 1 and 4 people should be in the frame, the subject should be in the center, all subjects should be within 10ft of the photographer, and the subject should be somehow kinda “zany,” like a girl flashing the photog in a supermarket or a dog in a stroller (!). The evidence is on the site.

if it says “street photography” on the cover…

After looking at Hamburger Eyes, this was like drinking plain water to wash down a delicious taco.

Later I flipped through Hiroh Kikai’s Asakusa Portraits. There’s an interview with Kikai at the front, it sounds like he’s basically ignored here. He has almost never exhibited in Tokyo, but for 30 years he’s been making portraits in Asakusa. His work is served well by great titles, like “A man who muttered under his breath, ‘That’s an expensive camera,’” or “A man who traveled a long distance to eat eel.”