Searching - Jennifer Percy (Sat 01 Oct 2016)

Jo and Tokyo Students - Gold Palace / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Jennifer Percy on Searching:

We often think of searching as a kind of movement, a forward motion through time, but maybe it can also be the opposite, a suspension of time and memory

via The Searchers by Jennifer Percy.

Temple - Kyoto (Fri 14 Sep 2012)

On Photography and the Ordinary - Adam Marelli (Wed 09 Dec 2015)

Untitled - Fushimi Inari-taisha - Kyoto (Fri 14 Sep 2012)

Adam Marelli on Photography and the Ordinary:

The more ordinary the better.

via What did Japanese art do to photography: Part 2 by Adam Marelli.

Another common term photographers use to describe the ordinary is banal, being the hallmark of my own photography. In Japan in Sep 2012 I was at my banal best.

Go .. - Kirk Tuck (Mon 28 Jul 2014)

Kyoto's Orange Temple - Fushimi Inari-taisha (*) / Kyoto (Fri 14 Sep 2012)
Kirk Tuck (*) writes:

getting ready to be ready can be forever, and that's too long.

via Starting new projects. Building on old ways of seeing. (*) by Kirk Tuck (*).

Go (*) Kirk, Go (*).

On Randomness - Seth Godin (Sun 26 May 2013)

Untitled Random Photo -Tokyo (Fri 22 Sep 2012)
Seth Godin (*) writes On Randomness (*):

there's a lot more randomness (*) in the world than we'd care to admit.

He elaborates:

There are two things to be done with that fact.

1. The first is to identify the few things that do happen for a reason and learn (*) from them, as opposed to ignoring the available lesson. When cause and effect is at work, figuring out the cause is the single best way to manage the effect.


2. And the second is to take the (essentially) random (*) events and choose to respond (as opposed to an overreaction). The big opportunity is to figure out how to take advantage of the change (*) that was just handed to us, even if it wasn't for us, about us, or what we were hope (*) for.

via Does it happen for a reason? (*) by Seth Godin (*).

Warning Light - Mt Fuji / Japan (Wed 19 Sep 2012)

Warning Light - Mt Fuji / Japan (Wed 19 Sep 2012)

Wall - Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Wall - Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Tokyo, the 50's - Ikko Narahara

Tokyo 2012 - Sumida / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)
Ikko Narahara (*) writes in the preface to Tokyo, the 50's (*):

Tokyo, the 50's
When I First Roamed the Streets
by Ikko Narahara (*)

Photographs arrive suddenly from out of the future. For it me it was always like that. Suddenly I would reach out and grab it in midair - the photographs had appeared by itself in my hand. Whenever I pushed the shutter button, my body seemed to become transparent, as if it were out int the middle of the photograph. And as I continuted to take photographs over the years, I came to feel that the images I took had already buried in matrixes of some sort in the space of the future, where they remainded waiting for the moment when I would one day dig them up. That must surely have been how it was. From that time of the big bang with which the universe started and began its evolution, perhaps even though the will of the universe latent in the fluctuations in the "nothing" preceding the big bang, these experiences had surely been prepared for. I am simply a messenger sent to meet up with the images and rescue them. This is the only way I can reconcile myself to the strangeness and mystery of having brought so many photographs into the world.

Possessed by thoughts like these day after day, I suddenly remembered I'd forgotten something - the photographs I had taken when I first began roaming the streets.

I bought my first camera in 1954. I got it to use for my planned work., "Human Life". At the time I couldn't have imagined that after exhibiting that work my whole life would change course toward photography and toward the person I am today. In the intervals between photographing "Human Land" I used to walk the Tokyo streets with my camera. I didn't have any special or clear purpose in mind. My family had often moved to different locations in western Japan, and since I was a child I'd had the habit of thoroughly exploring each new location. I felt the same interest in my exploring Tokyo, whereI'd lived since I came there as a college student. The only difference was that now I carried a camera with me. I breathed photographs on Tokyo street corners the way I breathed air. In my viewfinder those street corners changed into "streets in my photographs." Whenever I released the shutter, I seemed to hear the beat of modern jazz, which I loved so much. I remember I kept on rambling the streets in this way until I became involved in taking my next work, "Domain" in 1958. I was so lazy that I only printed a few of these photographs. The negatives lay buried their negative case, where I forgot about them. By chance, however, I remembered these negatives from forty years earlier. For the past three years I have again been photographing in the streets of Tokyo, and this brought back the memory of my earlier roamings.

"I'd really to see them .. I wonder what photos I took back then?" I couldn't even remember most of the images, and very few of the contact prints remained. But the moment I realized I wanted to see them, I was overcome with the strange feeling of being faced with the all too obvious and simple fact that photographs have to be printed in order to be viewed. After all these years I'd become thoroughly accustomed to the life of taking photographs, and yet here I was suddenly realizing that all too easily I'd vaguely assumed that once I'd pushed the shutter the things I'd taken simply continued to exist by themselves. But even for me, they were actually nothing more than events lying latent in my mind. As mere negatives there were like inverted ghosts; they had to no reality as photographs. I was shocked to realize that those negatives still lacked real existence, and then I had to laugh at my own blindness.

Before long, from what seemed to be the negatives, I made new contact prints and began to look through them.

As I put them into the enlarge, I could hardly wait to see how they would turn out. Unrecognizable images of which I had almost no memory began to appear before my eyes. Were these really my photographs? The photographs came into being like starlight arriving from forty light years away.

Past time buried in the time of the future - a sleeping time with with its eyes suddenly wide open. Through this small astonishment I was also tasting the strangeness and wonder of photographs. As that time my darkroom was filled with the paradoxes of time travel.

I've come to see that these photographs, which excavated the light and wind of the 1950's, were unmistakably the first steps in my travels through cities which would turn into the rest of my life. [..]

I bought this book following this Review (*) by Jesse Freeman (*). The preface is one of the most amazing pieces of writing on photography I have read, and I have read a lot. A beautiful book, both in words and photos, and I am so glad I took the risk to buy it on a whim.

Intersection - Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)
Will need to look at the photos from that day to work out exactly where in Kyoto I took this one.

Intersection - Hiroshima Peace Park / Hiroshima (Sun 16 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Hiroshima Peace Park / Hiroshima (Sun 16 Sep 2012)

Origami Cranes - Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students - Hiroshima / Japan (Sun 16 Sep 2012)

Origami Cranes (*) - Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students (*) - Hiroshima / Japan (Sun 16 Sep 2012)

History is .. - Brooks Jensen / LensWork Daily (Fri 01 Jun 2012)

A dragonfly flitted in front of me .. (*) - Hiroshima Memorial Museum / Japan (Sun 16 Sep 2012)
Brooks Jensen (*) writes On The Past (*):

History is important

• history is inspiration;


• history is a foundation on which we stand;


• history is an opportunity to learn from the wisdom of others so that we don't have to make their same mistakes;


• history is a background that informs our work.

via Our Place in History (*) in Random Thoughts (*) by Brooks Jensen (*).

Brook has a way with words and these caught my attention when looking through his Random Thoughts Archive (*) today. I have a few photos that remind me of history and the photo above is one of the most powerful of the incomprehendible. At least for me anyway. On Hiroshima, I can't put it any better than Beth Nicholls (*) who writes (*):

It doesn’t bear thinking about, and yet it is something we all need to think about it. The Hiroshima Memorial Museum is a painful eye opener that I wish every single one of us could visit. It is hard to think that we were ever at war with Japan, but even so, it is one history lesson we must not forget.”

Found via a quick Google Blog Search (*).

On Racing - Vernon Gambetta (Thu 03 Jan 2013)

Running - Grand Palace / Chiyoda / Tokyo (Tue 18 Sep 2012)
Vernon Gambetta (*) talks On Racing (*):

[..] the medals are won by those who can race. Those who are race hardened, who understand tactics and are fully adaptable to variety of race situations.

via Lessons from 2012 - Part One (*) by Vernon Gambetta (*).

On Change and Moving Forward - Kirk Tuck (Wed 30 Jan 2013)

Floorboard Cross Section - Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)
Kirk Tuck (*) talks On Change (*):

The thread that should run through everything though should be to honestly have fun with your work.

You don't have to love everything but you sure have to like the process.

But to fall back in love with the process you have to yield to the idea that everything changes.

It's always tough to stomach that change must include me...

via (*) by Kirk Tuck (*).

While Kirk abstracts the above from his working life as a professional photographer, it is a great way to understand the change proces, discontinuities in your life and whether you upto going with it or wallowing around in self pity for what once was (hope that makes sense).

On Complex Heros - J. Tolkien

Bike - Ryogoku / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
Roger Colby (*) abstracts the following from J. R. R. Tolkien’s 5 tips for creating complex heroes (*):

1. Complex heroes. must suffer.


2. Complex heroes are rewarded for their suffering.


3. Complex heroes fail.


4. Complex heroes have fatal flaws.


5. Complex heroes are ordinary people.

via explore (*).

More Faces #3 - Teramachi Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

More Faces #3 - Teramachi Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)
A little out of focus, but I like the result.

Orange Lantern #4 - Joanne and Betty - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #4 - Joanne and Betty - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)
As you can see, I was quite taken by the Orange Lanterns (*).

Orange Lantern #3 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #3 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #2 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #2 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #1 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)

Orange Lantern #1 - Hanami-koji Street / Kyoto (Sat 15 Sep 2012)
Like the placement of her feet on the circular manhole edge - did not notice this until just now. The Beauty of Photography. Sometimes you just get lucky.

On Colour - Daido Moriyama (Aug 2012)

Green and Yellow - Tokyo (Sep 2012)
Daido Moriyama (*)f talks On Colour (*):

Sometimes I take a picture of just a colour

Simply because I like the colour.

via Daido Moriyama: The Mighty Power of Photography (*) by Ringo Tang (*).