persimmonous.jp

An interesting story about the last roll of Kodachrome in the world.

“I will be quite brief. Everything I have to say is on the walls of this exhibition.”

– William Eggleston, who’s first solo show in Japan is at the Hara Museum.

Photographers here generally wear fashionable hats.

From: Mom’s Old Kodachrome (or Lt. Jones in Japan). It looks and feels like the Ginza to me.

I don’t have to go out and look for photography — it finds me. Or that’s how I’ve felt these past couple of days. Yesterday, for example, I was on the subway when a middle-aged businessman sat next to me. He looked absolutely ordinary except in one way: he was studying this most appetizing catalog of photography books.

I couldn’t control my curiosity and had to ask him where I could one.

“You can’t,” he told me. “At least I don’t think you can in Japan.”

He then explained that he’d just gotten back from Germany and a book event. His suit told me that he was in the printing business, and not publishing.

“Do you work for Dai-ichi (No. 1) Printing?!” I asked, impolitely.

“Dai-ni (No. 2), actually.”

He looked hurt, but went on to explain that his firm printed Masafumi Sanai’s 赤車 (Sekisha, ‘red car’), which was judged one of the top 10 books at the Kessel forum. (I noticed that the Sanai book was chosen by an art professor rather than a photographer, unlike some of the others. I will let you guess my opinion of the work from that).

By coincidence I had recently picked up and looked through Sekisha in a bookstore. It really is beautifully printed and I told him so. The businessman then surprised me by telling me exactly where I had seen it: at the Aoyama Book Center in Roppongi. He knew because it was the only place in Japan that was physically selling what has been declared one of Japan’s best recent photo books.

It reminded me again of how small the of world of contemporary art photography really is. We imagine that such works are seen by millions, when actually the number is in the thousands. It has to be, because these days books for even major names are printed in the low thousands or even high hundreds.

That was yesterday. Today I saw what I think is an increasingly rare sight — the “street photographer,” like this fellow above, at work.

I am fairly sure he was a street-shooter, even though he was in violation of one of the cardinal rules of genre: Never put yourself in a situation you can’t easily escape.

Seriously, though, I find it admirable that someone of student age is actually out taking photos of strangers — that is to say of an outer world that might snap back –
when many contently photograph the dishes in their sinks or the tiles in their bathrooms (or for that matter their red sports cars). That is to say objects, from which we are to meant to read (or not read, which is a statement as well) an inner world.

I also liked his hat. I’d love to wear something as characteristic, but find that the brim sometimes gets in the way of a good shot.

This article appeared recently in the Observer and is worth a read.  I found it so interesting, in fact, I’ve taken the liberｔy of saving it. 　

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about music and photographs — no wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. Lately there’s been a song playing in my head constantly, and it really makes me feel as if I’m taking a photograph. 

There are lots of long lists about songs and photographs such as this one. Personally, my short list is just three songs:  On it there’s “Kodachrome,” which is really about obession. Then there’s the bossa-nova “Desafinado” (”off-key”), which has this line:

“O que você não sabe, nem sequer pressente
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
Fotografei você na minha Rolleiflex
Revelou-se a sua enorme ingratidão”

(It means something along the lines of “I took a photo of you with my Rolleiflex, and got a picture of your great ingratitude.”)

The third, which is the tune that I can’t get out of my head at the moment, is an old standard, “I Only Have Eyes for You” (Jamie Cullum version here). It’s probably the most “photographic” song I’ve heard, even though it makes no direct mention of photographs or equipment at all. It’s about seeing, or rather, bringing an object into focus. This line,especially makes me go all “bokeh” inside:

“I don’t know if we’re in a garden
Or on a crowded avenue
You are here, so am I
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view
I only have eyes for you”

It’s surprising when the death of cat makes the news. In this case, though, the cat — Chiro — was an famous model. It belonged to photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, who’s now 69. Chiro was 22, which made her about 100 years old in human years.

写真家の「アラーキー」こと荒木経惟氏（６９）の愛猫チロ（メス、２２）が病死した。人間にたとえると１００歳を超す長寿だった。荒木氏の数々の作品に登場。早世した妻、陽子さんの代わりに荒木氏を精神的に支え、ファンの間でも有名だった。

　チロは２月２５日に体調が急変。腎不全で今月２日に死んだ。３日のひな祭りに荼毘（だび）に付された。荒木氏は「長い間オレだけのために生きてくれて、ありがとう」と感謝したという。
チロは荒木氏がモデルとして撮り続けた妻の陽子さんが１９８８年にもらってきたネコで、ネコ嫌いだった荒木氏も魅了。１９９０年、写真集「愛しのチロ」が平凡社から出版された。

Chiro in “Sentimental Journey”:

Minoru Iguchi has taken some pretty good pictures over the years — most of them on or about Oct.11. That’s the day, back in 1959, when Iguchi, now 75, married his high-school sweetheart, Tatsuko, three years his senior. Ever since then, on every anniversary of their wedding except one, he’s set up a camera on a tripod and snapped a photo of himself and his wife enjoying their dinner. She on the left and he on the right, they look out from the frame directly at the camera, with a hint of a smirk on his face and a mask of patience on hers.

That’s pretty much is all there is to the photo exhibition “A half-century of Wedding Anniversaries,” running until Feb. 21 (this Sunday) at the Seigetsudo Gallery in the Ginza district.  maybe we’ve all seen fast-motion videos of people aging on youtube, so Iguchi’s photos shouldn’t seem special. Except somehow they is. These photos don’t speak  so much about speed as a remarkable stability.

At first glance, very little  changes in the Iguchi home. But the close you look the more you see: The couple’s rice-maker s continually upgraded: They change houses three times; Mother-in-laws move in and pass away; Late in life they take in a cat, replaced by a photo among  images of the Iguchi’s grand-nieces and -nephews. Meanwhile the couple age, but it’s hard to point to exactly when they become old. Iguchi credits much of that to his wife’s hair dye.

“I didnt start off trying to make a statement, I just saw a chance to a record of our everyday lives,” says Iguchi, a former photographer and cameraman for NHK. “But by continuing this long it’s taken on several meanings.”

“I think my wife thought I’d eventually give up,” he adds. “And partway though I got the sense that she was tired of humoring me. I think that she’s as surprised as anyone that we’ve gone this far.”