描写

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s

This beautifully-assembled collection has been an inspiration over the past few months. There are many amazing images, and beautiful repro/packaging on show, but it’s the sheer narrative surge, the urgency of the photobooks themselves as assemblages that grips me. Give me 90 minutes with Hosoe’s Man and Woman or Kikuji Kawada’s The Map over watching a film (other than Tarkovsky, maybe) any day. An essential purchase, though a frustrating tease for those of us without access to the original books. Shame that so many of the volumes lovingly-reproduced here havent’t been reprinted, and are only available at auction for crazy …

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Stranded

Stranded — the magazine made by contributors (including myself) stuck overseas by Eyjafjallajökull earlier this year — is now on sale. Profits go to the International Rescue Committee. Grab a copy.

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Stranded

At Stephen’s suggestion, while stuck in Tokyo, I participated in Andrew Losowsky’s Stranded project. Unfortunately, due to work I didn’t get to shoot some of the content Andrew had requested, but some of my shots might end up in the final version of the magazine. In any case, I recommend you check it out. There was some coverage in the Toronto Star yesterday, which features one of my photos.

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Tokyo…

Thanks to Eyjafjallajökull, I’ve been stranded in Tokyo since 20 April, waiting on a flight to get back to London. Apart from it being very difficult to get on with the day job, having unexpected time in my favourite city has been a joy. I’ve bought an Olympus E-P2, as I really need something a little less conspicuous than my D300 for the occasions when big camera kit is simply not going to get thru the door at clubs or events. Image quality and handling is great, but the flash is — of course — next to useless, and — …

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Masumi Tipsy Saito in Tokyo

Masumi has posted some snaps of her performance on 15 Jan at the Art Complex Center of Tokyo. Looks fabulous, and I regret I couldn’t make it over to see the show. In her photos you can also see some pictures we shot November last year to accompany the performance. More to come, hopefully, on her return to London…

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Yugen…

And yes, yugen… To achieve the end of yugen, art had sometimes been stripped of its color and glitter lest these externals distract; a bowl of highly polished silver reflects more than it suggests, but one of oxidized silver has the mysterious beauty of stillness, as Seami realized when he used for stillness the simile of snow piling in a silver bowl. Or one may prize such a bowl for the tarnished quality itself, for its oldness, for its imperfection, and this is the point where we feel sabi. […] The love for the fallen flower, for the moon obscured …

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The Flower of Stillness

A fragmentary translation of Zeami [世阿弥 元清]’s The Nine Stages of the Noh in Order served as both inspiration and creative headfuck for me during my time in Tokyo. As an outsider to the performance tradition in which it’s founded, The Nine Stages is opaque, yet provocative: the image of the Flower of Stillness — snow piling in a silver bowl — abides with me, and in my work. The Nine Stages of the Noh in Order Higher stages Flower of the miraculous – transcends power of speech and working of mind due to the yugen of a master actor. …

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Japan