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 (*).

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.

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 Photography - the relationship between objects and people - Daido Moriyama (Summer 2005)

Traffic Barrier - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)
Daido Moriyama (*) gives an insight into his photography when asked What do you want viewers to take away from looking at your photos?:

Most of my photographs are taken on the street, of objects on the street.

I want to capture the relationship between objects and people.

I don’t ever think about what people are going to think looking at my photographs.

There are many things I can’t control.

That viewers see the photographs in a different way is really important, but it doesn’t influence the work.

My message enters the image, but I think it’s good if many messages enter the image, not just mine.

via Daido Moriyama Photographs His Beloved Shinjuku (*).

Street Portrait - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

Street Portrait - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

Street Portrait - Fender - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

Street Portrait - Fender - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

Street Portrait - Umbrella - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

Street Portrait - Umbrella - Jimbocho / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)

On Captions - New Colour Guide - John MacLean (Thu 13 Dec 2012)

Bitumen - Skytree / Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
John MacLean (*) On Captions (*):

The titles nullify the viewer’s question: "What is it?" When that question is answered, the next question might be: "Why is it?"

via Books of the Year: John MacLean's New Colour Guide (*) by Dan Abbe (*).

On Photography - on the edge of meaningless - Mark Cohen (YouTube)

Street Portrait - Jinbocho (*) / Tokyo (Thu 20 Sep 2012)
Mark Cohen (*) On Photography (*):

It is not some kind of exact analytical science going on here.

It's right on the edge of meaningless, but it's in there and that is what makes it so fascinating.

via Mark Cohen - Street Photographer (YouTube) (*).

Definitely one of my favourite photography related quotes (*) so far - something I can empathise with and relate to, which probably says something about me and how I view the world.

On Remembering - Family Photographs - Colin Pantall (Tue 06 Nov 2012)

Orange - Asakusa Kannon Temple / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Sometimes photography seems abstract, but then something happens that makes it concrete.
Colin Pantall (Tue 06 Nov 2012)

Sometimes you read an almost random post by someone you don't even know - you it find so pertinent and you are deeply touched and you learn something about life and yourself. Today is one such day ..

Colin Pantall (*) writes (*) on the passing of his Mother-in-Law, Elizabeth, last weekend:

I think it was a relief in some ways that she died, because she wasn't independent and it wasn't the way she wanted to live, but at the same time it was a massive shock. Not because of the death, but because of the passing of an era, the end of a living history. You can keep history alive in various ways, but when the person who witnessed it goes, it does spell the end of a chapter. It doesn't mean we should forget it, but there is still some part of a time that has gone. Things have moved on.

He also talks about how someone is remembered through photographs and our memories.

On Photography, he writes:

things are also preserved and the family album does this admirably. It's a shorthand of memory, of history, of an edited and at times idealised past, where certain things are hidden and certain things taken away - sometimes in retrospect. Even so, we still look at it quite objectively as something quite factual.

However, complementing the photos (if they were made and are available), there are the memories to draw upon and the cues (*) that inspire them:

But Elizabeth didn't have those old photos, so I wonder how she will be remembered. Just as words are sometimes better than photographs, so is food. I remember her Slovenian cooking, her gingerbread, her puddings, her cakes and so does my wife.

I have learnt that it is important to remember and in some ways this has become my life purpose (*). As Colin reminds us, there are photos as well as our memories - what we remember.

eljeiffel (*) for me is all these elements of remembering, remembering not only Jenny (*) and those that have gone before us, but my own legacy (*) - the scratches and fractures (even if it is just a couple of photographs of the colours orange and blue, and the hidden memories they evoked in me) I will leave on this world when I am gone.

Blue - Asakusa Kannon Temple / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Wed 19 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Wed 19 Sep 2012)
The first steps on the way to and back from Mt Fuji that day. One of the better Intersection photos from the trip. A little bit of rain always helps saturate the colours.

Intersection #2 - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Intersection #2 - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
Always looking for something new in the familiar. I like the touch of yellow.

Night Lights - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Wed 19 Sep 2012)

Night Lights - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Wed 19 Sep 2012)
The view from the room of our hotel in Shinjuku on a rainy night.

On A Touch of Squalor - Daido Moriyama / Telegraph (Tue 23 Oct 2012)

Garbage Bins - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
Daido Moriyama (*) is quoted in Daido Moriyama: Low life in Tokyo (*):

I’ve never been attracted to places that are very hygienic. I like a touch of squalor.

The a touch of squalor quote reminded me of my Eiffel Days (*) and the superbly named book A Touch of Class: Learning to Program Well with Objects and Contracts (*).

Footpath - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Footpath - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Tue 18 Sep 2012)

Intersection - Shinjuku / Tokyo (Tue 18 Sep 2012)
Rei Shito (*) on her street photography (*):

With street photography, I can meet many, many people I’ve never seen, and hear their stories

via Japanese Street Photographer Rei Shito Branches Out to London (*).

An approach to street photography to aspire to. Have just added her stylefromtokyo blog (*) to my Google Reader.

On Understanding a Photograph - Francis Hodgson / Financial Times (Thu 11 Oct 2012)

Wall - Suehirocho / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)
From Caught in the exhilaration of the moment (*), Francis Hodgson writes about Daido Moriyama's (*) approach to photography:

Moriyama [..] treats each moment with absolute equality.

He neither makes any judgment himself, nor expects you as his viewer to make any.

The photograph is a moment experienced, nothing more and nothing less.

Moriyama is capable of something approaching documentary, [..] and he is capable of the lyrical .

But I don’t think he ever asks us to understand anything.

This quote goes well with Trent Parke's (*) approach to viewing a photograph (*).

The Streets of Tokyo - Jim Clinefelter (flickr)

The Streets of Tokyo (*) by Jim Clinefelter (*)
Found via Littlefields Photography Magazine By Jim Clinefelter (*) by Japan Camera Hunter (*).

Definitely worth following the flickr link (*). Have to get myself one of those magazines.

The Jacks - Just Like Yesterday - Suehirocho / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)

The Jacks (*) - Just Like Yesterday (*) - Suehirocho / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)
Detail - The Jacks (*) - Just Like Yesterday (*) - Suehirocho / Tokyo (Sat 22 Sep 2012)
Funny how a random snap shot at an intersection can lead down a path of discovery. Introducing The Jacks (*):

Just Like Yesterday (*) - The Jacks (*) [Youtube (*)]

Blue Pipe - Skytree - Sumida / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)

Blue Pipe - Skytree (*) - Sumida (*) / Tokyo (*) (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
As is usual for me, we go to major tourist attraction, the brand new and very high Tokyo Skytree (*) Tower, and this is what I come back with, a photo of a blue pipe crossing a storm water drain.

Drawn to the blue and the receding darkening to black. The subtle vertical rust lines towards the bottom really make it for me. Another personal favourite from the trip.