© 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.
About three years ago it was very hard to look at Flickr without coming across My Little Dead Dick, a photo project between Patrick Tsai and Madi Ju documenting their life together. So many things about that project seemed so right for the time: here were young people shooting film through compact cameras with abandon, taking the material of their own lives and turning it into art, all seemingly without very much effort at all. If they worked “jobs” at all, that didn’t come through in their photos—which seemed born of a will to live and breathe photography at each waking moment. Apart from the obvious/voyeuristic interest people have in observing other people’s lives, I think this seriously unrestrained drive to shoot made the project a breath of fresh air in the internet photo world. It’s hard to speak about “generations” online, because everything moves quickly, but I’m sure My Little Dead Dick will come to be cited as an important reference point for some crop of hotshot photographers coming to your monitor in a few years. Pat and Madi were, for me at least, the first and last real Flickr stars.
from “Hot Water” by Patrick Tsai
I’d read an interview with Pat where he said he was moving to Tokyo, so once I got here I sent him an email to see if he wanted to hang out. I didn’t actually expect to hear from him, but he got right back to me and we met up a couple of days later. We’ve been really good friends since then – Pat is one of the most generous dudes I know, and I’m forever indebted to him for hooking me up with my job here.
Pat has a new exhibit which is opening this coming Saturday, September 4, at Cultivate Gallery in Tokyo. It’s called “Hot Water,” and I don’t want to give away too much but it is definitely worth checking out. There’s an opening party on Saturday from 5-8, I’ll be there and if you mention Street Level Japan (just yell it out if you dont recognize me ok, i prob wont be the only paleface) I’ll get you a beer.
The exhibit is up from September 4 – September 26, only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2-7pm. GOOG MAP
