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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.”

It seems as if something strange is happening in Yokohama again — a place has been set up where you eat and drink off giant-proportioned plates and glasses. More photos here.

Looks grand doesn’t it? It’s a conceptual art piece by French person Lilian Bourgeat at Zo-no-hana Terrace until January 11. The Japan version of his work looks rather less idyllic, though, to judge by the plastic cups in this photo:

These two photos form the most striking juxtaposition at the current exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography:

On the left, looking distinctly out of his element, is Japan’s Ihee Kimura standing on a ladder somewhere in the French countryside, looking out of frame even as the action seems to be going on right below him. The shy-looking man on the right, with his delicate hands wrapped around a camera, is Henri Cartier-Bresson. The two took these portraits of each other when they first met back in 1954.

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A short video showing the goings-on at our exhibition “Shiritori Project.” It ends this Sunday, BTW.

There really isn’t a lot happening in my neighborhood — culturally speaking. Sendagaya to most people is just the expanse on the map between the shopping districts of Harajuku and Shinjuku, and it only draws visitors only when there are sports events and mega-concerts at the nearby stadiums or so-called “family sales.”

There aren’t many families here, but there are lots of small- and medium-sized apparel firms, most quite hip. At the end of each fashion season they hold these semi-private sell-offs of stuff that would otherwise go to the incinerator.

This place on a slope, I seem to remember, used to belong to a fashion business. The last time I passed by, though, I was surprised to see that it had been turned into a gallery. Naturally enough it’s called Slope Gallery, and deals in books too. It’s first show was of photos of New York City by Tomonori Tanaka.

The website says the gallery’s focus is on surfing, skateboarding, bikes and boards — style signifiers, if you will, reaching out to nearby Harajuku. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find it here: It’s part of the fashion business after all.

At gallery WZP (with zakka+) from Dec. 05, 2009.
東京都新宿区市谷薬王寺町71-7
牛込台マンション304号
71-7 Ichigaya-yakuojicho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Ushigomidai Mansion 304

tel:03-3260-3234
Map

Tomorrow there’s an opening party and presentation for the photography book “IL CIRCO” （サーカス）by L. Pellegatta, along with the telling of a short circus story by Shinji Ishii. Here are the details:

Opening Party: / THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5th, from 18:00 ~ 20:00
at UTRECHT/NOW IDeA
Minami-Aoyama 5-3-8, Minato-ku, Palace Miyuki 2F
港区南青山5-3-8 パレスミユキ- 2F
TEL 03-6427-4041

The exhibition continues until Nov. 15

This was a great show. I saｙ “was” because it ends today at the new Korea Cultural Center in Yotsuya 4-chome, a beautiful building near all the tiny photo galleries at the edge of Shinjuku. Click here, though, and you can see a full set of photos of Korea shamans and ceremonies taken by Kim Soo Nam (金秀男), who passed away last year. The photos date mostly from the early 1970s onward. The music is fantastic too.

There’s a special sort of groove to Tokyo’s Ginza area. It’s luxury brand shops in posh new buildings and the sort of people who spend hours in them. You get the idea. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect to run into a mini-bohemia.

But just step a couple of streets back from the main Chuo Dori, and you’ll find a corner that seems to be the antithesis to everything Ginza A bit shabby, a bit dark and shaking from the construction of a designer furniture outlet next door (word has it that it’s an IDC Otsuka–yuck) the venerable Okuno Building is Ginza’s inner Montmartre, packed into a seven-story brick building.

With its distinctly art-deco flourishes–think round windows–the structure is a magnet for the art crowd. Chockablock with architecture offices, design firms and antique shops, it’s also home to least 20 art galleries. Here’s a blog with lots of photos of the place.

“There are certain people who appreciate the building for what it is,” explains owner and manager Tsuguo Okuno (that’s him in the photo at top, with two clocks inhis office). His grandfather put up the building in 1932. “There’s a long list of people waiting to move in,” he says, to any one of its 69 units.

Although it is not registered as a landmark, the Okuno Building is a rare, fairly unretouched reminder of the modern Tokyo of the prewar years.

Originally known as the Ginza Apartment, the building was a sister design to the Dojunkai Apartment building in Harajuku that was, despite much protest, destroyed  a couple of years back to make way for the Omotesando Hills shopping mall designed by Tadao Ando (yuck again).

The Ginza Apartment building was more upscale than its twin: It offered both heating and an elevator (unusual at that time for a residence) and sheltered the glitterati of the time, among them a Kabuki actor, according to Okuno.

After World War II the apartments were converted to offices. Almost 20 years ago, the first gallery, Kobo, moved in. The last original tenant passed away this Spring.

“This place is unique. It’s right in the middle of the Ginza but represents a totally different mindset,” says Akio Moriyama, operator of the Gallery Platform Studio in room 505. “Ginza is busy making money, but here there’s a sense of things moving more slowly.”

The number of galleries in the building keeps changing, he says. They all operate at their own pace and he’s never once seen them all open at the same time.

Moriyama says the management is likewise loose: In his case, he took over a former single-bedroom unit 10 years ago, only to spend half a year renovating it while holding down a day job as an architect and museum exhibition designer.

“I never got a bill (for the rent) all during that time,” he says, “which is amazing for the Ginza. Here personal relationships are more important. There’s a sense that people in this building are working together to make something.”

That sentiment is echoed by Ken Sawada, whose illustrations of mechanical fish were hanging in Gallery Seika (which also functions as an order-made hat shop on Thursdays) in room 312.

“It’s inspiring to be here,” he says, because of the building’s constant flow of creators and visitors. “It puts me in touch with artists–especially younger ones–that I probably wouldn’t meet in a stand-alone venue.”

Oddly, owner Okuno claims no interest in art: He almost never steps into the galleries. He does, however, know a thing or two about what sells in the Ginza area.

“This is a prime location, and I could tear this place down and put up a new office or commercial building,” he says.

“But look at what’s happening now. There are lots of new buildings in the area that can’t attract new tenants because there’s nothing that sets them apart,” he adds.

“Here there’s always people waiting to move in because there aren’t many buildings like this one left.”

Okuno Building is located at Ginza 1-9-8 (two blocks behind the Matsuya Ginza department store away on a side street parallel to Chuo Dori). If you go also visit the Henri Charpentier cafe in the nearby Yonei Building (it’s a landmark) for the orange-flavored hot chocolate (yum!).