Inspirational interview with Hiroh Kikai

There are too many good pull quotes to list here, interview with Hiroh Kikai from Lens Culture really pushes my buttons in a good way. Obviously he's a Japanese photographer so I'm interested from the beginning. But I appreciate his esoteric approach to photographic method, both in a career or life sense and also with respect to the momentary act of "apprehending an image," as he calls it.

An aside: there are useful and not-useful uses of this kind of language, i.e. "apprehending" an image, "commemorating" an ice cream truck. On the whole I would say that it has something to do with the (always legible) substance of thought behind the words. Kikai doesn't play around.

On the beginning of his life in photography:

I started off by taking several manual labor jobs: truck driver, dock worker... and I was able to survive on half of my salary. I was aware of the fact that I lacked photographic experience. I was still immersed in my philosophy studies at the time, and I began to think about the following concept: the essential thing was not the camera but the act of looking.

Things did, of course, eventually work out for him. I like hearing about people who find their way through unorthodox paths.

A man watching the horse races on his portable television set, 1999 by Hiroh Kikai

He thinks of his subjects outside of any context at all:

It is not the place that matters, it is the people. It is not the fact that these people are Japanese but the fact that their face and their body tells a story, whether they are Japanese, French, English or Martian...

These ideas might ring a bit zany to some audiences, but the images are there. Onward, philosophically motivated photography!

Photography in Japan

This is a rather long essay, but worth reading for a summary of photographic tradition in Japan:

In Japanese, the word for “photograph” is “shashin”. It is made up of two ideograms, “sha” meaning “to reproduce” or “reflect” and “shin” which means “truth.” The Greek etymology of the word “photograph” is to write (graphein) with light (photos). Therefore, in the Japanese mind, the process itself consists in capturing the truth, or the essence of the matter and “making a copy” of it on a surface. Consequently, the result will always contain a certain element of truth. Since the advent of photography, this way of seeing things has become commonplace throughout the world, but in very few languages is the concept expressed with such clarity.

The essay is hosted by Lens Culture, I found it on their excellent blog.

Rei Sato, "Sun"

I don't have this book, but I want it — check out its microsite with many preview images. It costs 80 bucks here in the states! I'll have to pick it up on my next visit to Japan.

Rei Sato also has a show up in NYC right now through August 8.

Counterpoint

This is from the introduction to Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. The emphasis is mine, to make this post "more bloggy":

Even the youngest emerging photographers in Japan often find publishers for their work. In no other country do photographers so easily issue monographs; this is partly because, until the last three decades, few outlets other than books and magazines existed there for serious photography. Today, museums and galleries in Japan offer constant venues for fine art photography, and exhibitions abroad steadily increase. Established Japanese artists have worldwide audiences for their photographs. Still, most Japanese photographers prefer books as the ultimate "vehicle" for their projects. Often, they write the texts for their books, as well as magazine articles about their own work and that of other photographers. These opportunities to publish texts as well as images mean that their words have often been as influential as their photographs. Some essays have sparked controversy; others have set parameters for evolving aesthetic alliances, and have established lineages of influence.

I would like to align myself with this tradition.

Moriyama & Araki

A couple of weeks ago I went on a small binge of photo book-buying. Over the course of a weekend, I bought Nobuyoshi Araki's Subway Love, Daido Moriyama's Shinjuku 19XX-20XX and the latest issue of Hamburger Eyes. I don't have much to say about Hamburger Eyes except that it's the photo magazine San Francisco deserves.

The Araki and Moriyama books provoked a lot more thoughts for me. These two are both two "gods" of Japanese photography. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Moriyama only works in black and white. Araki uses color, but Subway Love is all black and white. The X’s in Shinjuku 19XX-20XX correspond to 67 and 04; the Araki book is from 1963-72.

Subway Love is a collection of photographs that Araki took while riding around on the Tokyo subway after work. He would use a wide-angle lens, and wait until there was a bump in the train to disguise the sound of the shutter. According to his interview at the back of the book, he'd try to wait until people were yawning or picking their nose until shooting them ("it’s the things that people don’t want photographed that are interesting"). He also relates that every so often, people would get mad and take him to the subway police. (They once asked him "why are you taking pictures when there’s nothing special happening?") It was pretty brave of him to shoot people on the subway – pointing a camera at someone isn't the easiest thing to do – but the book gives you a sense of his compulsion to shoot. Some pages show entire contact sheets, others display a few consecutive frames. You can follow his eye.

click for full page view

So while Araki was in people's faces on the subway, the Moriyama book is very much about surface. The first image of the book sums it up: it's taken at night, of a small parking lot with a couple of rain-soaked cars. There's a pool of water that shows up as entirely black, except for the stark white reflection of a sign advertising 100 yen parking. Another image is of shadows on a tiled building, another shows a thin line of daylight running between two buildings. People show up in these pictures, but they're not really the subjects. These pictures aren’t actually from the book but they were shot in Shinjuku anyway. The first and third pictures are very representative of the book.

It's impossible for me to look at Subway Love without thinking of Araki's later photographs. He became famous as a "bad boy" photographer for taking tons of pictures of naked Japanese women, in bondage or otherwise. There’s a link between the gaze on the subway and his later stuff. He became something of a lecherous old man, but I admire the way that he let his will to photograph take precedence above all other things. Both of these guys have been in my head lately: Araki for more so for his attitude towards photography, Moriyama for his style. There are a lot of pictures in his book that are just flat out blurry, or where the contrast is pushed really far. It makes me want to take more risks with processing.

I’m thinking of not taking color pictures for a little while. Black and white is so much easier to control.

Good photographers writing badly; plus another person's picture

In Marco Bohr's Observatories series I've found something that's a little bit similar to what I'd like to do with the project I mentioned yesterday. It's not exactly the same in concept - he photographs people looking at stuff, not necessarily being looked at - but the results are close to what I'd like to get myself. Also, all the photos are taken in Japan, so I'm definitely a fan.

© Marco Bohr

if i'm not pretentious enough to blog this image, just let me know man

The series is well worth a look, and yeah I wish that I took some of these pictures myself. I'm not really sure how much I can support some of the prose in his artist statement, though:

The undefined scenery and washed out highlights are as much an invitation to imagine the view of a landscape, as it is an invitation to define our self.

This is so nauseating. Where are the anti-humanist photographers? Who are the photographers destroying photography? Is it unrealistic to ask for someone to give at least a nod to the absurdity inherent in the active financial subsidy of this type of image? I'm sure these photographers must exist, can someone enlighten me? Shouldn't Marco Bohr be laughing just a little harder?

I'll put myself on the chopping block now. Here's a picture I took over the summer, also in Japan, which would be part of the Other people's photos project. A professional-looking black border probably isn't going to save this one. Feel free to chastise me in the comments for posting this.

I'm keeping a set on Flickr of photos that might work for the project, but I won't even make any bones about it, I have a long ways to go.

Reading

Another quote from Setting Sun. This one is from Daido Moriyama, who might be like the Bill Eggleston of Japan. I'll have to look more in to that.

In the end, I may be considered a "professional photographer" only if that category includes blurred images.

Reading

Excerpt from an essay by Nobuyoshi Araki, in Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. I picked this book up at the de Young Sugimoto exhibit.

It's not possible to expose the subject with photography. But you can expose yourself. It's not necessary to take photographs in order to expose yourself, but having the intention to do so is necessary. Concretely put, over-explaining, you must plainly lay yourself bare. That is your duty to the subject. But even without that intention, the person who takes the photograph is exposed. Photography is frightening.

Naming

I am waiting for a copy of The Critique of Cynical Reason to arrive. Until then, more Kenko. This is essay no. 116:

The people of former times never made the least attempt to be ingenious when naming temples or other things, but bestowed quite casually whatever names suggested themselves. The names given recently sound as if they had been mulled over desperately in an attempt to display the bestower's cleverness, an unfortunate development. In giving a child a name, it is foolish to use unfamiliar characters. A craving for novelty in everything and a fondness for eccentric opinions are marks of people of superficial knowledge.

Timeliness

No. 88, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko. Translated by Donald Keene.

A certain man owned a copy of Wakan Roei Shu which, he claimed, was in the hand of Ono no Tofu. Another man commented, "I am sure that there must be a good reason for the attribution, sir, but does it not seem an anachronism that Tofu should have written the manuscript of a work compiled by Fujiwara no Kinto, a man born after his death? It seems rather strange." The owner replied, "That's precisely what makes this manuscript so unusual." He treasured it more than ever.

This was written around 1330.

MCV

There are two words for "experience" in German, Erlebnis and Erfahrung. The first corresponds to what we might call "everyday experience." Erlebnis is the experience of information, or momentary sensations. If you look at my Picasa web gallery, I've given you expansive captions for some photos. I told you a story of my trip. You can say to yourself: "Aha! That's Dan in Kyoto. My, he must really like soda." This is all correct. I didn't lie in my captions! On the contrary, I wanted to convey this experience--Erlebnis, that is.

Then there's Erfahrung, which names what we would write out as "Experience," in other words the effects that are left behind by something. This is what I didn't even attempt to convey on Picasa. Inside of the word Erfahrung is the word "Fahr," which comes from "Fahren," the verb that means to travel. How does one come back from a journey and tell of one's experience?

The pictures I have up on Flickr are not the answer to that question, but they're a much more likely candidate than what's on Picasa. I don't know if it's as effective for anyone else, but I find it's a very comfortable interface for looking at photos I've taken. I wouldn't consider Flickr a literal blog, but when I try to read the series of images as a series, I can't help but put together some picture of experience.

What a difference a Holga makes

Is there any?

I see white people

Back from Japan. I've posted a traditional photo album on Picasa.