The Noise is a collection of controlled experiments at the edge of photography. These are not happy accidents or ultra-loose snapshots, but very deliberate images made which question the nature of photography and of our perception. In some ways this feels like anti-photography, rejecting the sharpness and the detail that is is often equated with photographic perfection in favour of out-of-focus hard-to-read images. Even though Heyne may be deep into uncharted territory, these images are still fundamentally about photography, even though it is a corner of it that few of us spend much time in.

Stefan Heyne, Zimmer 911, 2007

Other adventurous types have wandered into this remote area before, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s double-infinity series comes to mind, but Heyne’s images feel more purposeful. Less ‘let’s see what happens’ than complex visual conundrums. The images all seem to be emerging from pitch-blackness, as if they were shot from the window of a deep-sea submarine, just short glimpses of a passing object that is already drifting back into the silence and the darkness. And yet, despite all of this I found that the austerity of these images made it difficult to penetrate into this world.

I was surprised to see that Heyne’s titles give information about their subjects, although at times this is so general that it reveals little. With abstract photography, I often find that my vision oscillates between focusing on the object being photographed and ‘accepting’ the form and texture of the abstraction. Because of this I found the titles to be distracting as they keep the images anchored to their subjects, instead of allowing them to move into a different realm.

I am not convinced that the photobook is the best space for this work. The book’s three essays (were three really necessary?) refer to Heyne’s prints on several occasions and I have the feeling that this work may work better the form of individual images at a large scale.

This is intriguing, adventurous and difficult work that is more of a visual and conceptual work-out than a feast.

Stefan Heyne, Strasse, 2004

Stefan Heyne, The Noise: The Exposure of the Uncertain, (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, Hardback, 267 x 222 mm, 96 pp, 45 colour plates, 2008).

Rating: Worth a look

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1. Review: Andrew Phelps, Not Niigata
2. Review: Lewis Koch, Touchless Automatic Wonder
3. Review: Steven B. Smith, The Weather and a Place to Live

Shigeichi Nagano, Workers at 5pm, Marunouchi, Tokyo, 1959

Blogging has been slow this month since I am curating two exhibitions opening in March. The first of these, Tokyo Stories, with work by Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi and Shigeichi Nagano, opens at Stockholm’s Kulturhuset on 6 March. I’ll be giving a talk from 1-3pm that day on Japanese photography and photographing Tokyo, so for any Swedish or Stockholm-based readers out there, do come along. The show runs from 6 March to 2 May 2010, and you can find out more about it here and here.

Eikoh Hosoe, Ukiyo-e Projections #1-1, 2002

Then on 20 March, Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory opens in Cologne at the Japanese Cultural Institute. We are producing a catalogue for this show, which I am very excited about so keep an eye out for more news about that in the next couple of weeks. You can find out more about the exhibition here and here.

In between all of this, I am planning to turn at least a couple of the 20+draft posts that have been staring at me for weeks into published ones.

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1. Japan: A Self-Portrait opening in Tokyo
2. Review: Shigeichi Nagano, Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958
3. “La rentrée” in Paris: upcoming exhibitions

Megumi Tomomitsu

Megumi Tomomitsu is fond of the plastic bag. She has even compiled a pretty exhaustive list of reasons why. For someone (and somehow I think I am not alone here) who stores hundreds of the things for absolutely no discernable reason, this interests me. Thinking about it, I probably own more plastic bags than photobooks, than items of clothing, than pretty much anything actually. Thank you Megumi, you have convinced me that I should learn to love my plastic bags, or at least to set them free.

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Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko’s Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s belongs to a new breed of photobook: the book on books. Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s two-volume history of the photobook is probably the best known of these, but there are other interesting examples. Jeff Ladd’s Errata Editions is taking this one step further with the ‘Books on Books’ series which each focus on a single photobook in order to make rare and out-of-print books accessible to us mere mortals.

Volume I of Parr & Badger already contained a chapter on the post-war Japanese photobook with a selection of some of the major books to come out of Japan in the 60s and 70s. Japanese photobooks expands on this territory over 240 pages providing a much broader selection of photobooks, including some relatively unknown ones. Some may be surprised to see a 240-page book with such a narrow focus as this, but this period of photobook production in Japan was so rich that this could have been expanded to twelve volumes and still left a lot of room for discovery.

Much of the interest in Japanese photobooks has been focused on the magazine Provoke and publications relating to it. This is the case with Parr & Badger’s selection and essay which focuses heavily on Provoke. The refreshing thing about Japanese photobooks is that it doesn’t just present the best-known and respected books of the period and instead includes a selection  ranging from the unavoidable Chizu (The Map) by Kikuji Kawada to a collection of anonymous student photography.

Spread from Issei Suda's "Fushi Kaden"

The book contains essays by Kaneko and Vartanian. Kaneko’s essay recounts his personal journey with the photobook, a unique one since few people were buying photobooks when he did (to the point where he once ordered a book only to have the publisher turn up at his door to deliver it himself because he thought it would be cheaper than sending it in the mail). Vartanian focuses on drawing out the major characteristics and functions of photobooks and their production. I think this is one of the key strengths of Japanese photobooks and one which I would have liked to see developed even further. This kind of editorial exercise often ends up becoming focused on ranking or selecting the best books, in keeping with our ever-increasing love for the list (something I have somewhat hypocritically complained about before). This book successfully avoids the pitfalls of writing a ‘best of’ list, choosing instead to present a rounded picture of the many facets of Japanese photobook production of this period and to show how they relate to each other in order to provide the reader with a context for understanding what defines these books and what makes them great.

Japanese photobooks admittedly has an unfair advantage over its competition: it is drawn from the collection of Ryuichi Kaneko, which includes some 20,000 publications making Martin Parr’s Japanese photobook collection look like a first-grade stamp collector’s in comparison. This headstart isn’t wasted and Japanese photobooks certainly uncovers its fair share of undiscovered gems. The forty or so books are presented with an extended essay and a healthy number of ‘interior’ shots (there is a nice preview of the book available on Vartanian’s website) which successfully give a feel for each book’s individual characteristics. For the geeks (and amongst photobook collectors that percentage is alarmingly high) there is also a wealth of technical information on the production process for each book (photobook porn if you will): who designed it, how it was printed and who by, where it was bound and, as a bonus, the original retail price just to make you wince when you find out how much these are worth today.

If you can’t afford a photobook collection (or even if you can) this is one you really shouldn’t miss.

Spread from Shomei Tomatsu's "Japan"

Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian, Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, (New York: Aperture, Hardcover with bellyband, 23 x 31cm, 240 pages, ca. 400 four-color and duotone images, 2009).

Rating: Highly recommended

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1. Review: First Doubt
2. Future of photobook creation
3. Some more fuel on the photo-book fire

Hideaki Uchiyama, Japan Underground II, 2003

Andreas Gursky, Kamiokande, 2007

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Shomei Tomatsu, Kingdom of Mud

For any Tokyoites out there, Gallery 21 will be showing a selection of works from a lesser-known series of Shomei Tomatsu’s work next month. Although he has never been to Europe or the United States, Tomatsu has done his share of wandering around Asia and in the 1960s he made a trip to Afghanistan, which led to a series entitled Kingdom of Mud. I hope these will be vintage works, but in any case a Tomatsu exhibition is always worth a visit.

Shomei Tomatsu, As Salaam Alaykum, Gallery 21
2-28 March 2010

Related posts:

1. Nagasaki, 9 August 1945
2. Review: First Doubt
3. Review: Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s

A little Friday fun for you: the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, on a 7-minute rant on the nature of photography. I love the way this is all delivered straight to camera, as if he really wants every last Russian to know his thoughts on the subject. Would love to know who wrote this speech for him.

(via foodforyoureyes)

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1. Plagiarism in photography

Giacomo Brunelli, The Animals

Giacomo Brunelli is currently showing his work The Animals at London’s Photofusion gallery (until March 26th). Brunelli’s images have a ferocity that is absent in a lot of wildlife photography. The images are not shot from a human perspective but from that of the animals themselves, which contributes to the immersiveness and energy of the images. This is not a photographic portrait that seeks to emphasize the human traits of animals or the majesty and elegance of the animal kingdom. Brunelli’s “animal-focused street photography” highlights the bestial traits of these animals, and the presence of violence and death comes through to powerful effect.

Giacomo Brunelli, The Animals

Giacomo Brunelli, The Animals

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1. Richard Barnes
2. Shomei Tomatsu, As Salaam Alaykum

Hiroh Kikai, An older man with a penetrating gaze, 2001

I first met Hiroh Kikai in 2007 after discovering his portraits taken over several decades in Askausa, Tokyo, in his stunning book Persona. A collection of these photographs entitled Asakusa Portraits has since been published by Steidl. On a trip to Japan in May 2008, I managed to sit down with Kikai for an interview in Shibuya, Tokyo. The interview was conducted in Japanese and the following extract from the interview is a translation.

Marc Feustel: You have had an atypical experience as a photographer. For many years you had to juggle photography with earning a living. Do you think this had a significant impact on your approach to photography and the subjects that you chose to photograph?

Hiroh Kikai: Well, in the beginning I did not intend to pursue a creative career, let alone a career in photography. For me photography was simply a more attractive hobby than literature or painting. But as it turned out, I had some talent, and after having photographed for some time, I began to really enjoy myself. Photography was not only enjoyable, but it was also absolutely modern. Everyone could participate, it was magical! And it has to be said that this new form of expression fascinated people: photographers had a halo of prestige and conveyed an image of strength.

In addition to being at the cutting edge of technology, photography was the most expressive medium of communication: everyone wanted to become a photographer. I began to photograph not because I thought I could make a living from it, but because I was irresistibly drawn to the medium. Also I did not see myself working for a photographic publication. You have to remember that at the time editors paid their staff a pittance while expecting a colossal amount of work from them. On little more than 300,000 Yen for a monthly salary, you could not expect to go very far. I decided to follow my own path, and kept away from these circles. You know what they say: little by little, a bird builds its own nest. I was determined to not waste my talent and for me, joining one of these photography publications would have been the best way to waste my time and energy: I prefer to be free to do as I choose. So I started off by taking several manual labour jobs: truck driver, dock worker… and I was able to survive on half of my salary.

I was aware of the fact that I lacked photographic experience. I was still immersed in my philosophy studies at the time, and I began to think about the following concept: the essential thing was not the camera but the act of looking. You had to look again and again until you could feel the essence of everything that was around you. The concept was good, but I needed some way of putting it into practice. At first I thought about taking a job on a tuna fishing boat. The sea seemed like it would be photogenic. This was the 1970s, conceptual art was the trend, and even if there was no specific subject, any old picture could suddenly be held up as a work of genius. I quickly understood that this was a bit lightweight as an artistic approach. But beyond any of this, it seemed important to me to have a change of scenery and to see new things if I wanted to evolve. I decided to take the tuna fishing job and I got on board.

MF: Your biography states that you “had a happy childhood, from the age of 11 or so preferring to play alone in the nature that surrounded the village”. When I look at your career it seems that you have continued along this path as a photographer.

HK: It is true that I am a bit of a loose cannon amongst contemporary photographers and I have always preferred working alone. People may think this is driven by nostalgia or by misanthropy: in our society people that choose to work in this way are often the victims of prejudice. It is therefore a difficult way of life, but I think it can be a hugely valuable one. I feel that today we devote more and more time and energy to superficial things. I am referring to the way that people live, particularly in contemporary Japan: saturated with information, with an ever-growing list of things that we need and do not have. All of this acts like a screen, blocking out the true nature of things from our atrophied gaze. In what sense are we still living fully? I wonder, amidst this profound confusion, how we can know what is real and what is fake? What is it that will make us judge someone as superior?

I don’t think it is nostalgia, but it is true that I have felt, and continue to feel, that there is something lacking, a metaphysical void in our society and what it should be aiming for. When I took photographs in India, I did not want to convey some eternal vision of “Mother India”, but simply the way of life of some people that I met over there; for me these photographs radiate intensity because they show a way of life devoid of all artifice, a way of life concerned with the fundamental things. I felt the same thing in Turkey.

Hiroh Kikai. A tattoo artist and his son, 2003

MF: You have said that “Writing is a task that [you]’ve never enjoyed”. This surprised me as your captions seem to be very important components of your Asakusa portraits.

Philosophy begins with the art of using words and language. At least, this is what my professor taught me, so therefore I am familiar with the act of writing, or at least of articulating ideas in an intelligible fashion. However the idea of writing has always more or less paralysed me. With this kind of complex, I would never have expected to be able to come out with anything at all, but against all odds, I wrote the texts for my books India and Gassan. I suppose that being immersed in the world of my childhood must have inspired me.

To answer your question, these captions and these photographs are exactly the same thing. At least, they come from the same approach. For me they are intrinsically linked and both create an intense expressiveness. Photography and writing are part of the same battle for me: both involve making something intelligible which is not necessarily so. Both of them formalise an obvious fact that is not always visible, acing like a magnifying glass or, if you prefer a musical metaphor, transposing the ordinary from a minor to a major key. In the case of this process of transformation and formalisation, even that which we considered as trivial or unimportant becomes vital and likely to encourage reflection. When one constantly questions reality, and that is what a photographer does, one becomes aware that everything is linked: immobility and movement, positive and negative, the important and the futile… these apparently opposite notions in fact complete each other, in a process that is brought out by the act of capturing an image. Writing is based on the same principle, as are all forms of expression that in a general sense attempt to capture reality and to transcend its chaos. One then becomes aware of the link that exists between objects and concepts that everything seems to oppose but which in fact only exist because their opposite does. My approach as a photographer is based on these considerations; if there is something that I have learned from all of those years as a student of philosophy, it is this.

MF: You have spoken about the role of time in your photographs. For me all of your photographs have a very peculiar sense of time, even those that bear the hallmarks of modern society such as your Tokyo Labyrinth series: it is hard to say whether we are looking at the past, the present, the future or some mixture of the three.

HK: Of course I aim for the formal aspect of my work to capture reality as closely as possible, which means that I aspire to a resolutely modern—but all-encompassing—form, in the sense that it takes account of both the past and the present. I do not think particularly of capturing the “present moment” or the “essence of the Japanese soul” when I take my photographs. What outweighs all of these considerations is the act of photographing the human. Indeed, when I am shooting in Asakusa, I don’t think about any of this at all. If Asakusa was suddenly swept away, I would just be a man in the cosmos photographing other men in the cosmos… in truth I attach very little importance to topography. Once again I prefer to adopt an all-encompassing vision: the place where I am located is simply an extension of my own roof and I am here for one thing only: to create. Of course, if we limit ourselves to a strictly formal point of view, New York for example is an ideal backdrop for street photography, but form cannot replace substance. If I do not have a person that emanates some kind of life force or experience in front of my lens, the alchemy will not work and in the end all that will remain is a slick image with no soul. Topographic considerations are for architectural photography. Finally, as for the choice of Asakusa, once again, it is not the place that matters (in fact I started shooting there because it was not far from my home), it is the people. It is not the fact that these people are Japanese but the fact that their face and their body tells a story, whether they are Japanese, French, English or martian… the most important thing is that when I arrive I can say to myself “Ah, there are lots of people today, I should be able to find something good.”

Tokyo Labyrinth

MF: There is undeniably a very universal quality to your work. What does the idea of being a “Japanese photographer” mean to you? Do you consider yourself as a Japanese photographer with the cultural heritage that that entails or do you consider yourself simply as a photographer?

HK: To be completely honest with you, I must admit that I never look at the work of other photographers. I am always concerned that I will be destabilised by the fact that some of them are much better than I am. If a photographer cannot look at this work objectively, then he is not a true photographer. A photographer must constantly put himself into perspective because photography is not an innate language. It is not because I spend 24 hours running through the streets looking for photogenic models to pose for my camera that I will get good results.

I remember a time when Andrzej Wajda came to my studio to see some of my photographs. He asked me: “Are these people all Japanese?”, and then would say “they almost look like Westerners here!”. But for me, they were first and foremost human beings. And if he saw a resemblance between Japanese and Polish people, and more generally Europeans, it is because today, beyond our respective grievances, stories and wounds, globalisation—and the homogenisation of our societies that it leads to—means that we all fundamentally have the same conditions of existence. For this reason, when I shoot a portrait it is of no interest to me to say that this person is in a certain location. Perhaps my approach is wrong. Perhaps some people need this kind of information to appreciate a photograph and to be able to relate to this stranger suspended on this glossy paper. What can I say to this? Nothing really. Particularly given that it is this process of relating that makes a good photograph. On one hand we have the image, on the other the viewer. If the viewer relates to the image, feels integrated into what he is looking at, then a dialogue is established between the 2 parties and, in some way, the photographer is also taking part in this silent conversation. This is the case for the photographs that I took in India as well as my portraits taken in Asakusa. For a split second, the photographer recedes into the background and becomes a pure silhouette, in perfect osmosis with his subject. The gaze of the viewer comes afterwards, and determines decisively the beauty and the success of a photograph. If there is interaction then the image works. It is alive. You can observe the same thing in theatre. I should add that this notion of “seeing” is far less obvious than it seems. Looking is within everyone’s grasp. Seeing is difficult. There is a difference between being passively stuffed with images, as is the case today, and being active in the process of apprehending an image. We look with our eyes, our heart and our reason. Seeing, truly seeing, is all of these things.

Hiroh Kikai. Kitashinagawa, Shinagawa, Tokyo, 1986

Related posts:

1. Interview with Toshio Shibata
2. Welcoming in 2010
3. On lists

iPhone fitted with a SLR lens

iPhone’s have been on my mind recently as E just had hers brazenly stolen straight out of her hand on the metro last week. I may be just a bit behind the curve writing about the iPhone when Apple have just launched their new revolutionary (and badly named) iPad, but I recently received an email from Chicago-based Jeremy Edwards with information about his From the Pocket iPhone photography project, a kind of visual diary of his city, which he is planning to publish as a series of print-on-demand books starting this year. His site comes with a kind of (dis)claimer, “All of the images featured on this site were captured using iPhone cameras. Images were processed using various iPhone photography applications only.” Jeremy calls himself an iPhoneographer and refers to photographs taken with an iPhone as a specific genre, “iPhoneography”.

This reminded me that a few months back I had been surprised to discover that Joel Sternfeld, one of the big names of American colour photography known for his large-format work, was going to publish a book of photographs of Dubai entitled iDubai taken exclusively with an iPhone (amusingly iDubai is also the name of a 50-storied residential development), and I’ve caught glimpses of other iPhone photography projects since. The impact of the iPhone is not limited to photography either. There was quite a bit of excitement when the New Yorker featured a cover ‘painted’ using the iPhone application Brushes and a few ’serious’ painters and draughtsmen like David Hockney have begun to use the iPhone instead of a paintbrush or pencil.

In relation to painting and drawing, the iPhone does seem to offer something genuinely new to artists. This kind of pocket-sized touchscreen technology is groundbreaking and it goes far beyond what carrying around a pen and paper can offer. I don’t have much experience using computer software to draw or paint, but it seems to me that being able to cut out the mouse and to be able to draw with your finger directly on to a screen must feel far more immediate and intuitive. I have yet to see any iPhone art that I have enjoyed in and of itself rather than thinking, “that is quite impressive for something produced on an iPhone,” but I’m sure I will soon enough.

However, when it comes to photography I fail to see what distinguishes photographs taken with an iPhone from photographs taken with any other cameraphone. One of the big gripes people have with the iPhone is that the camera isn’t all that great, although that has been improved on more recent models. I find mine to be noticeably worse than on my previous cameraphone. The touch-screen is irrelevant in the process of taking a photograph: what difference does it make whether you press an actual button or one that appears on your screen? So what is it that has made people so excited about the iPhone as a camera. Is it the iPhone applications that allow you to edit photographs on your phone directly instead of having to upload them to a computer first? While I think that apps are really one of the greatest innovations about the iPhone, I don’t see how this brings much to the table in terms of photography. Sure there are now lots of applications that are essentially extremely basic versions of Photoshop, allowing you to make a photograph look like a Polaroid or apply a virtual selenium toner, but I don’t see the advantage of being able to do this instantly instead of waiting a few hours and doing it on a computer with better quality photo-editing software.  iPhoneography strikes me as more of a brand name than a distinct photographic practice. In that sense it is closer to Lomography, the craze that two very marketing-savvy Austrian students managed to create around the Russian Lomo Kompakt Automat camera.

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