Street Level Japan

[この記事は日本語でも見れます。]

One of the main reasons I enjoy the Higashikawa Photo Festival is that there are always many photography students and recent graudates walking around with their portfolios. It always seems like young women from Osaka have the best photos to show, and this year was no exception. (This can be explained by the quasi tradition of students from Osaka volunteering at Higashikawa. I’m going to try to find ways to look at photos by college students in Tokyo.)

This year I met a number of students of Jun Abe, a street photographer from Osaka who’s attracted some attention online, even without a website. None of the students had websites either, but Yoshiko Fujita did have some digital files of her work. She was kind enough to answer a few questions over email, and I’ve translated the results here.

All images © Yoshiko Fujita

Please introduce yourself.

Well, I was born in Hiroshima in 1985. I graduated from Kyoto University of Foreign studies in 2009, specializing in French. I graduated from Osaka Visual Arts’ photography program in 2011, and I’m currently a research student there, which means I only have one class a week.

So you’re out of school, in a way. What kind of work are you doing?

I’ve got some part time work at a newspaper scanning old negatives. It’s all related to newspaper articles, so I see photos of high school baseball games, railroads, stuff like that. Every once in a while I see a really nice snapshot, but still, I wouldn’t say I’m influenced by it or anything like that.

Do you have any photography-related goals or plans?

As for a goal, I guess someday I’d like to publish a photobook. For now I’m just going to keep on taking photos. Along with 3 other friends of mine from Osaka Visual Arts, I run a gallery in Osaka called Hatten Gallery. I’ll have a show up there from October 11-20.

What photographers do you often look at?

Martin Parr, Haruko Nakamura and Jun Abe. It’s not photography, but I also like Matisse and Dick Bruna.

I met Abe-sensei when I entered school. My first year, he was the teacher assigned to my section’s class, and I signed up for his seminar my second year. Abe-sensei is always thinking of his students, he really cares about that. He’s dedicated to telling you things clearly, which is great. He likes films and manga, which I think might explain why he’s so quick on the draw with his camera—it’s really surprising how fast he is. At any rate, I respect him very much.

What kind of advice has he given you?

He told me that with my photos, I should aim for something between “real” and “airy.” I take a lot of photos of children, and he suggested to me that I aim to take these photos in the same way that any regular person would—you know, the way that their grandmother or grandfather might. He says that, much like discovering the world by looking at it in a unique way, I should try to photograph with the feeling of rescuing the world. I may be a fragile and highly sensitive person, but even so, I can take strong photographs.

Rescuing the world? Wow.

Yeah, I don’t always completely understand what he says. Anyway, I think it might have to do with taking a boring place and making it interesting.

“Our generation is still struggling to establish itself.”

Masui Fumie is a young photographer from Osaka who graduated from Osaka’s Visual Arts College last year. She’s currently in a show at Place M which features her work along with a few other recent Visual Arts graduates. The show spans Place M and Totem Pole Photo Gallery, and runs from now until February 6.

©Masui Fumie

Tokyo is the center of Japan’s photography world, but Osaka has a good scene too; there are a few good galleries there, and a lot of great people. I’ve only been a few times but it always seems to me that Osaka Visual Arts is right in the middle of everything that’s going on—I’ve been impressed with the students and alumni that I’ve met. The two shows up right now will be a good chance to see what the next crop of young Kansai photographers are doing.

© Masui Fumie

I met Fumie over the summer, when she showed this work (“Firefly”) at the Higashikawa Photo Festival in Hokkaido. At that time I was most struck by the way that so many of the people in her photographs seem so sad. I asked her about her idea for this project and she said: “I’m finding people by themselves in the city who stand out to me. They’re usually about my same age. I’m 21 now, and people of our age maybe aren’t yet adults, but we also aren’t children, either. Our generation is still struggling to establish itself. I’ll be out in the city, notice some complete stranger, say hello and then take their picture. Doing this gives me a feeling of reaffirmation.”

© Masui Fumie

I was surprised to hear this: “our generation is still struggling to establish itself.” As much as I try to avoid cliches about “depressing Japan,” it’s probably true that things are getting generally tougher on young people. To point to just one thing, the number of young people employed as dispensable contractors rather than full-time employees is creating a lot of tension. I’m not sure that Fumie is trying to issue a call to arms here, but I do think it’s rare to see a young photographer (Japanese or no) who’s interested in something like generational solidarity. For me, it adds something to the crowded genre of street portraits.

OK, my translation of Yuko Tada’s series “山遊鹿々人々図” is fanciful, but it’s not too far off. In order, the characters in Japanese mean “mountain, play, deer, deer, person, person, image.” I like seeing the words “Deer” and “Deer” next to each other in English.

Anyway, I found Tada’s work through Osaka’s Third Gallery Aya. These photos were taken at Nara, a city in the vicinity of Kyoto famous for massive temples and friendly deer. Nara is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Japan, so even just searching in English you can find more than 20,000 photos tagged “nara” and “deer” on Flickr. Still, even working with a subject that could be easily dismissed as a cliche, I thought that Tada found something worth looking at. You can tell from her website that she’s aligning herself with the “kawaii girl photo” aesthetic, hardly a movement renowned for its artistic integrity, but whatever, if the work is good it’s good.

© Yuko Tada

© Yuko Tada

© Yuko Tada