I met a friend yesterday in Yokohama, we talked and drank for a while. In the course of our conversation he said something like this: “I really like American photography, it feels so fresh. To me, things in Japan are stale, everyone is doing the same thing here.” I said “really? It seems to me like so many photographers in America, especially graduate students, have these really ponderous artist statements, which doesn’t interest me at all. I feel like Japanese photography is something new.”
And so on. Of course there’s something obvious here (we both know our own cultures pretty well, so we’re interested in something different) but it’s the first time I’ve heard someone here really say that they were bored with things. We went on to talk about the idea of being “famous” as a photographer: if Eggleston or Friedlander walk down the street, do amateur photographers recognize them? Moriyama and Araki would get recognized. Then the over-polite service of the chain restaurant we were at prompted us to talk about how in Japan, photography is a way for radical individual expression. Of course there are some photographers who take a restrictive approach to their work, but the big names here (Moriyama and Araki) take a very open approach to allowing photography into their lives.
This conversation made me think of things a little bit differently, like it’s just as helpful to introduce foreign artists here as it is to introduce Japanese artists abroad.
昨日は横浜で写真関係の友達と会った。彼と、アメリカと日本の違いについて話した。彼が「アメリカやヨーロッパの写真の方が日本より新鮮」と。僕はちょっとびっくりしました。なんか、なんで日本の写真は新鮮じゃない？？「アメリカには、写真家、特に大学院生はよく重過ぎるアーティストステートメントを書く。それがも面白くない僕にとって日本の方が新鮮！」と。
今考えたら、それはもちろんですね！自分の国の文化はもよく見るから、ちょっと飽きる。これからは、日本の写真家を海外に紹介するだけじゃなくて、もちょっと海外のひとを日本に紹介するかな？と思った。その後は、「有名な写真家」のはなしだった。例えば、アメリカにはアマチュアーカメラマンは全くエッグルストンとかフリードランだーの顔わからない。日本にそのアマチュアーカメラマンは荒木や森山のかお分かるでしょう？
日本語はいつもすみません！このテキストは酷い、それはよくわかる。でも最近はまた漢字を勉強してるから、練習ためにちょっと使ってみたい。
これからちょっと日本語でブログを書くと思う。去年（２００９）の一月に来てから、日本語が勉強していた。あまり上手じゃなくてけど、これからもっとおそわりたい。当たり前、よくミスします。。。
このブログに質問したい。日本語で、面白い写真についてテキスト読みたいです。漢字はゆっくり電子字書でしらべる。オススメのあるかな？？畠山直哉の言葉が面白そうかもしれない。
ミスする時、いつでも声かけてください！よろしくおねがいします！
i want to use this blog to practice japanese. i’m not any good right now, but i’m learning more, and maybe people could talk back and forth??? anyway for your own entertainment, this is what google says i wrote. i would hope that i come across slightly better to a japanese reader:
I think now a little blog in Japanese. Last year (2009) came a month after, and was studying Japanese. But, not so good, Osowaritai further. Naturally, the common mistakes. . .
Question to this blog. In Japanese, the text to read about funny pictures. Kanji 字書 look it up in slow electron. Recommend you might be? ? Words might be interesting Naoya Hatakeyama.
When you make a mistake, please talk to her anytime! Thank you!
This summer, people talked about flow, or at least reblogged about it a fair bit.
Is it unreasonable to say that nothing could be farther from a photograph than the concept of flow? Photographs usually show single arrested moment, not a perfectly continuous series of them. (This exclude time lapse photography, but…) In a book, there’s a relation between images, but it’s more like the relation between items in a collection. Photography isn’t video!
Why does it make sense to talk about flow? Even if an image is static, it can be produced from a fluid technique. I mean something like letting things come to you, or throwing yourself into things—it’s a form of being unintentional either way. Maybe the “trick” of this technique is to keep different thoughts in mind, until they form “a tension so exact that it is peace,” as Robert Adams said.
This tension could be found in a shadow and a person:
or a painting and some walls:
or a train, a person and a city:
We can read these images and say that the things in them are as an expression of tension; they are totally arbitrary, totally ordinary, the train doesn’t need to be a train, it could have been anything but there happened to be a train there. But what kind of tension are we talking about? Maybe it’s between the actual flow of moments—dude… time!!!—and the concrete stillness we get back from the camera.
I had thought about this in late July while I was walking up a hill in Hokkaido, it appeared to me so clearly, now that I’ve written it out and gone over it a bunch of times it mostly seems confusing and pointless. But I want to publish it, just so that I can get over the thought. “A work is the death mask of its conception” – Benjamin
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.
