Japan – Camera Obscura

Secret Affinities by Alessandro Niccolai

Alessandro Niccolai — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 19:04:20 +0000

Please visit Secret Affinities by Alessandro Niccolai for the full size image.

My project titled “Secret Affinities” is focused on Journey, and in particular on my experience of life and work in Japan that was fundamental to my education. It’s divided into three collections of images (one of them taken in Fukushima), since especially 3 are the sojourns in Japan that have left substantial changes in my way of relating to the concept of travelling and… and no… I don’t think I can satisfactorily explain what should be observed and “perceived” in first person. What I can report are the sensations that I feel now, taking advantage of the opportunity to prowl, anonymous, between the works and the visitors. It’s like showing up at the dining table, a table full of food that I have cooked. From starters to coffee nothing is missing. It took time and introspection. I did what I could and I did it in my way. Now I’m here as a mere commensal to capture impressions.

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Art always influences me and not at all in a literal form… I mean… I see exhibitions and collections and meet artists, then all this information seems to disappear but I think that everything one feels in his/her life shows up later in the creative process, in some way. Then, if a particular exhibition is too much argumentative and brings issues to life in a way that irritates me who want to see works valued for themselves, I can go home.

Please visit Secret Affinities by Alessandro Niccolai for the full size image.

Visiting an exhibition of my own creations is completely different. I don’t interpret, I don’t feel… I just remember. I’m curious to understand if what I did is comprehensible or too dense and impenetrable for the viewers, even if, in any case, I’ll not attempt to persuade them… I simply do whatever it is I’m driven to at the time of creating a project. My desire is to communicate not alienate but I can’t pander to the taste of one particular kind of viewers.

Please visit Secret Affinities by Alessandro Niccolai for the full size image.

Anyway, I was talking about “Secret Affinities” and this day that finds it hard to disappear below the horizon, and it does it with that typical slowness of the summer days, while I wander around looking at the reflections of the lights on the glass picture frames and reconquer step by step my own company. So, together with my rediscovered presence, I stop in front of a photograph, an eruption of light on black ground, a ghost that stretches and jumps on the buildings to take them by surprise. I make a few steps and I see clouds collapsing on me from the soul sky, as if they themselves might have been caught unaware by the emotional strength of which they are guardians and masters. I get away from that land of reflections along a road that leads to a city that immediately turns out to be more colourful, composed of fragments almost immutable, of natural creations. Here the memories seem more vivid, the colours still moist. As I pass, the leaves still seem to tremble on their aqueous double and I think I can hear the sound of the wind through the web of branches on which I fixed (when I took that photo) my gaze and lens in the uncertain light of a twilight. I limit myself to listening… listening to the words of the public. “Have you seen the eyes of this child?”, “What a beautiful backlight!”, “This Niccolai is a visionary!”, “But this is not photography! No detail, white is burnt and black is absolute.”,”This is delicate!”, “I prefer the titles to the works. They are deep!”, “I’m not an expert, but is photographing two shoes art?”, “Look? I hadn’t noticed this detail!”, “But this person vituperates the rule, the norm, the classic. He should go back to study photography and respect the form and the past!”, “Did you hear that man? Should one ask permission from some buried luminary of the industry to create? He should take leave of preconceptions and let the dead rest!”, “Do you think this is also analog? Or is it digital?”.

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What most intrigues me is to listen to those who came to give proof of their critical knowledge and ability, and then I try to imagine them busy with the story of a dinner that certainly could not be, in their report, of fish and peas but of noble proteins and fiber. They use words that are incomprehensible, and give my photos bizzare meanings that I myself don’t understand… and what’s more they keep involving my name in their meaningless discussions.

Sometimes, on the other hand, something puts a smile on my face. A great smile. I’m talking about when I get the impression, possibly wrong, who knows, that in someone a photograph of mine is arousing a start of poetry, the impression of a story, the feeling of a past and, on a detail that I had not even noticed, the vision stops to interpret a reality spurred by something that has nothing to do with intelligence and logic.

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Now I see in front of me a line of questioning heads, and, behind, other lines that chase and merge each other to get to new questions that arise more and more numerous, as if they had no end. Above, the ceiling enlarges and, on the sides, points downwards enclosing all this thinking. Behind it, stands another head which is a little balding. One moves when I pass and approaches to a photograph to see the details. The flow of the observers focuses on some images more than on others, but anyway seems to divide the spaces with good sense and showing their personal inclinations.

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“Ladies and gentlemen, please, on this side some works of great refinement and”… and for a moment I’m tempted to start to afflict the visitors with the usual erudition recited in that typical instructive tour guide voice which often lies on people’s distracted fantasies.

Please visit Secret Affinities by Alessandro Niccolai for the full size image.

Instead, I keep silent.

I like the silence of the museums. It’s a silence of buzzes. Every now and then someone makes a comment that sounds like a scream in a muggy Sunday of cicadas.

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Visit Alessandro Niccolai website to see more photographs.

Absolute Cure for Loneliness, by Tim Gallo

Tim Gallo — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:55:33 +0000

Following text and pictures by Tim Gallo.

“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds”
F. Kafka

In fact I hate nude photography. So far it destroyed my private life, brought me attention I don`t deserve and put me in a creative struggle I never experienced before. Nude photography stays on a thin line between art and anything else. If the girl is “likable enough” then it doesn`t matter if the picture is good or not – cause you watch it out of desire. I hate it.

But on my creative way as a photographer and movie director, I realized that if you hate something it doesn`t mean you have to ignore it. On the contrary, doing something you hate helps to understand yourself and to find a subject that is as interesting as disturbing. So when I met Cay for the first time I knew that she was the perfect one to guide me through the dark tunnels of my soul.

We met at an exhibition, she was looking at a portrait of herself taken by another photographer. I made a few comments about the picture and so our relationship started. Cay is a one of the top class pole dancers in Tokyo, she is also slowly becoming famous as a V-Cinema actress (mainly R-Rated yakuza movies, that go straight to dvd). I have to tell that pole dancing here in Japan is not like in other countries. First of all girls don`t get naked and the show is more concentrated on the dance itself. Funny thing I never saw her dancing, but just by looking at her you could tell she was one of the best…

As I usually do before any private shoots (when there is only me and the model) I ask my model for a date. And so I did with Cay… we went for a lunch now and then, talking about different stuff. Cay was different from all the women I had known before – fearless, over intelligent, lost in life and full of pain, that forced her dance to be more expressive and thus more entertaining.

Slowly we got to know each other and when she felt comfortable enough I talked her into the shoot. At first when I told her that I was interested in shooting her naked she refused, but when I explained that nude photography is something I don`t like and my reasons about it she said (as I expected her to say) that maybe it`s time to open a new door. We didn`t discussed the details of the shoot thus making it more exciting. I told her only one thing which was the hardest to say – that after this shoot I might loose interest in her as a model and that our friendly relationship may change after that. More to it, if our relationship don`t change then probably we did something wrong and I definitely will fail in creating good pictures. Now it`s always hard thing to say, but I`ve been taught by my sensei (teacher) to always be sincere with the model, slowly getting from her something that she didn`t expect herself.

I chose a small and cheap love hotel in Kichijoji, administred by two old ladies and called Inokashira Hotel. It is a perfect place for a shoot – old-fashioned, unpredictable – all the rooms are different and you never know what room will be introduced. Since shooting inside love hotels is a prohibited thing I had only one umbrella light (300w, Comet monoblock), which was easy to bring unfounded. I took zoom lens and 50mm lens.

I installed the light, made few test shots and we started…

Cay was moving around me, slowly getting her clothes off, smiling and giggling to me. I moved around her with the camera, changing position of the umbrella according to her position, bouncing light from walls, mirrors, tables, even from the tv screen.

I don`t know, maybe I was too tense or maybe she felt uncomfortable, but after 30 minutes of shooting inside the room I couldn`t concentrate and I didn`t felt good about the pictures. I know that photography is supposed to betray, that there is nothing interesting in getting pictures as you expect, but still it was too different from what I had in mind. It was all too simple, the pictures were too guided, unnatural – just a beautiful naked girl and nothing else. There was just no me inside it: “I” was the only missing in the subject.

I told Cay sincerely that I didn’t feel good about the shoot and maybe we should have a break. Cay was very nice and understanding, so we ended up drinking japanese tea (there is always coffee or tea pot prepared in this hotel): she absolutely naked, me all dressed up with the camera put aside. While drinking tea I couldn`t help mentioning the bruises and marks on her body and that is when she told me that she has this thing about scars. Pain and struggle excite her, she said. She also decided to show me her pierced tongue, which in retrospective decided the fate of this shoot. I never kissed a girl with a pierced tongue and I always wondered what it feels like. I had to ask her…

– I wonder how it tastes – I said. And our eyes met.

Now I knew that she was seeing someone, and I also had a girlfriend at that time. I knew that both of us were supposed to act professionally. But those were my dark days…

In no time we started kissing, forcing each other to bed… and when we both get excited enough to make love, somehow I found the strength to stop and to take the camera in my shaking hands. Making love was not exactly what I had in my mind. I told her that I wanted to make love to her through the camera and that I was going to try to get her out from my mind and from my body. Now, when I think about it, it was the stupidest thing I ever said. But at that time it worked and the shoot was tense enough.

Finally I knew what I wanted to portray: The darkest side of my soul. A foolish attempt to trick my loneliness, to cure it. I wanted to portray the Absolute Cure for Loneliness, a cure that never exists. Probably she felt the same… as shoot progressed we both got more silent and in the end there was just the sound of the shutter and of her body moving in the water.

I wanted to show her the way she was – alluring, dark with the skin full of bruises and marks that she left on herself. And the way I wanted her to be – pure white skinned, transparent and pure.

After the shoot was over she slowly put her clothes on and we got back to drinking tea. We both felt exhausted, with nothing to say. I took a cigarette and finally recognized the sound of rain beating on the thick windows of the room…

I received all kind of comments on the series with Cay. Some say it’s dark, some say it’s erotic, some say it’s dirty, some even say it is not “photography”. As for myself, I believe it’s the worst sincere photography I did. I know a photographer should lie to express things he feels… Cause sometimes reality is not as pleasant as we expect it to be, not so watchable. But I couldn’t do that in this one. And now that time has passed I am glad that I didn`t.

Safe Playground, by Miyuki Okuyama

Miyuki Okuyama — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:33:49 +0000

In this article Miyuki Okuyama, in addition to telling her childhood in a small village in northern Japan, explains her personal vision of photography. For Miyuki Okuyama, instead of documenting some kind of tangible reality, photography provides an access to a parallel world in which we can lose ourselves in our dreams and fantasies.

“Safe Playgroud”, the series of photos described in the essay, is entirely built and staged at home, (in a certain way like the dark worlds by Hyeyoung Kim, but in a much more realistic style), creating beautiful mysterious micro-worlds, explicitly in contrast to the accurate organization of Netherlands, the country where Miyuki Okuyama lives today.

Following text and photos by Miyuki Okuyama.

Contrary to the generally accepted purpose of photography, that is to record the present reality, my photographs are created in order to express rather inner, invisible reality. Actually a Japanese art director Shigeo Goto described my images “psycho-grapy.” One of my photo series titled “Safe Playground” is staged photography, and they are created aiming at triggering psychological effect in a viewer’s mind, such as childish fear, anxiety, and vague nightmares etc. These photographs trace the vestiges of memories which submerged in our sub-consciousness.

It is more important for me how something appears in the image than what it really is. That is the way I often create anonymous places or peripheral corners of an ordinary city in the images. My attempt is to summon previously mentioned feeling like fear and anxiety, and collective memory. One manner of this attempt is to make images somewhat familiar to anyone. Old hospital building, a signal box standing on railway, a roadside motel sign, a lit circus tent are all rather insignificant subjects which anyone may have seen somewhere, sometime.

As I wrote, my images are more of psychological representation than the representation of tangible reality. My ambition is to create images of a parallel world in which to lose ourselves in our own thoughts, fantasies, fears, dreams and memories. For the photo series “Safe Playground,” inspiration comes from my own memories, irrational childhood dreams and fears as well as fantasies. I spend my childhood and youth in a small village in northeast Japan. For me, this was a magical and somehow haunted place, just as the photo serried “Kamaitachi” by a Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe. In the works of Hosoe, one sees a strange panorama of an imaginary village, richly filled with references to old tales and superstitious, odd characters, who remind me of a man called Tadashi, a man with mild retardation in my neighborhood. Also a Japanese film and theater maker (also a poet and writer) Shuji Terayama created many of his writing and films (“Death in the Country” for instance) based on his childhood and youth in a small town in Aomori region. Both Hosoe and Terayama are from Tohoku region (northeast) of Japan as I am.

I do not know how exactly to explain, but my region has both charm and horror of a remote area. There is one good example of what it was like there: As a child, I was raised in a traditional farm household, where four generations lived under one roof. Not only my mother, but also my grandmother and my great-grandmother took care of me and my younger sister. I still remember my great-grandmother singing in old dialect lullabies. She said, “go to sleep child before the one-eyed demon comes to you. He’s standing already under our neighbor’s eaves.” This is one of the memories with dark undertone which are also fascinating.

In “Safe Playground,” the images are predominated by darkness, which is symbolically associated with human subconscious, and as the title “safe playground” literally tells that the images are the places to temporally relief human emotions (fear, anxiety, of course) in its suspended disbelief. For this reason, my works may have resemblance to the famous tales like “Little Red Riding Hood.” The tale provided readers a place to experience danger (particularly to young girls) and even enjoy it in safety. The author Charles Perraut concluded the tale:

“Moral: children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the street. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous one of all.”

As Perraut suggests the danger of a “wolf,” my photos also may remind a viewer of figures like a kidnapper, a false prophet, Bluebeard etc. These “archetype” of modern day are invisible yet are suggested in those images. In his famous novel “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “My Chère Dolores! I want to protect you, dear, from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways, and alas, comme vous le saves trop bien, ma gentille, in the blueberry woods during the bluest of summers.” (Vintage International, New York, 1955) These “coal sheds” or “alley ways” are exactly what a viewer sees in “Safe Playground.”

The series “Safe Playground,” besides subconscious fear as its central subject, has been motivated by the way contemporary society is structured. I started this series after I came to the Netherlands. I was devastated by the fact that I cannot find places to take photographs. This country is thoroughly too well organized. Then I have decided to make up interesting places myself. These images are all created in my studio, on my worktable, to be precise. Being in a different culture motivated me to do all these troubles of photographing (constructing the models, setting the scenes, shooting and more re-shooting).

Where I grew up, as I have already mentioned, is a small conservative country village. Compare to such backcountry, my new home seemed overly organized and urbanized. Despite its modernity, it seems something is missing, perhaps, shadows and ambiguity, and definitely the autonomy of individual spaces. In the Netherlands, everything must be controlled; new suburban town with straight and square city plan, streets are brightly lit at night, and even the trees in groves are lined geometrically. While the farmers of my home are free to build sheds with reused materials, Netherlanders have no such freedom. In this country, monstrous civilization is exterminating shady places. After coming to the Netherlands, I have come to realize how important to have ambiguous places near me, where human feelings can be freed.

“Psycho-graphy” may be macabre and ominous, yet it can also be intriguing and evocative. It is obviously different from “photography,” for it represents the alternative reality instead of the reality that surrounds us. Despite the darkness in the images, they look strangely familiar and tender, because we all posses such darkness within. My photographs reveal such simple fact that we all have dusky depth filled with long-discarded fears in our minds.

Beyond the Land’s End, by Yumiko Kinoshita

Yumiko Kinoshita — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:01:09 +0000

Yumiko Kinoshita is a Japanese photographer whose delicate images make me immediately think of brightness and lightness.

In the following essay she speaks about the importance of travel in her life and her photographic work. In addition to the description of a photographic session in Ireland, Yumiko Kinoshita writes some ideas about art that I completely share. As she does I love art and contemporary photography, but often I wish the importance of a conceptual statement to be resized, that contemporary photography could have a universal that people can share, regardless of all the conceptual ideas that we can associate with it.

Following text and pictures by Yumiko Kinoshita.

Lately, I have done an exhibition titled “Beyond the Land’s End”. I would like to explain how I came across the idea of this series. This is how it happened.

Ireland

I was in Ireland for shooting. We were driving north towards a beach and it was strange weather. Rain and snow were falling in turn, and sometimes there were even hailstones. We also had a little bit of sunlight but it disappeared right away. It was very strange, like all kinds of weather got together in one bottle. Only the strong wind kept on howling all the time. We kept heading towards the beach anyway.

Even though we parked the car near the beach, it seemed impossible to walk to the beach. The strong wind was still blowing, and the snowy rain didn’t seem to stop. Also, it was so cold. “What shall we do?”, we thought. Then, the rain suddenly stopped and the sun came out to light up our way to the beach. We hurried out of the car and rushed to the beach passing through a little path.

The thing waiting for me was a glorious and solemn landscape.　It was a pretty flat space, but low white sand hills spread out as far as we could see. The grass on the sand hills was almost blown away by the strong wind and was glowing gold. The shallow water was very calm and was endlessly transparent. The strong wind and blowing sand made it hard for me to open my eyes, but there existed some sort of tranquility that exceeded everything. Graciousness and deep loneliness were melting together into the generous landscape.

Being immersed in taking pictures, I forgot that everyone had already gone back to the car.

The scenery disappeared as the sun went away and it started raining again. It was just 10 to 15 minutes, but the moment stills leaves a strong impression in my mind.
On the way back to the car, I met a horse that was not there on they way up to the beach. The gentle-eyed creature came to me and stayed for a while. I took a picture of it, and then went back to the car.

This experience helped me to remember that travel always takes me somewhere like this.

I love travel, and I especially love travel to the end of lands, or places where has nothing but open space. There always exists tranquility, graciousness and deep loneliness. It always purifies my inner self. And, I feel there is no art higher than something nature makes.

Based on this idea, I decided to make a series called “Beyond the Land’s End”. The collection of these images from my trip will condense the feeling of “Land’s End”.

Even though I have done one exhibition in Tokyo this year, the series is not completed yet. In this series, I now have pictures from Ireland, US, France, Switzerland, Canada, Portugal, and several parts of Japan. I would like to pursue this theme for my entire life. It cannot happen all at once because I am collecting just one piece from each place I travel. But there exists common feeling behind in each piece. I think when more and more pieces come together, the same feeling behind the pictures will appear clearer.

Photography and travels

Like this series, I always make series about travels. Actually, I have not really thought about it by now. It is natural as that to me. And in fact, it is great that I have always had chances to travel, on business, friends’ matters, or just private.

When I was a child, I was always listening the stories of NY from my father as he had been living there before I was born. I was always excited about the stories and dreamt about it. NY was so much far, and it existed only in my bedtime stories. Since then, I guess I have been dreaming about traveling. Of course I have been to quite many countries by now, but still, I have the same dream to the places that I have never been.

Travels always bring me lots of beautiful surprises. And more than anything else, I am addicted to experience the things like that in Ireland. I want to see more glorious sceneries that will move me as many as possible in my life. I do not know if my trip can be called my photography mission, but the quest of sceneries that give me a special moment is now a big reason of traveling.

In the way, the series, “Beyond the Land’s End “ will explain why I travel a lot too.

Photography as Poetry

I know nowadays that artworks have some stronger uniqueness or messages, or some sort of extremity. I of course personally enjoy artworks, but I would rather love something universal for my own works rather than pursuing the uniqueness. Classic art like old paintings of portraits and landscapes may sound closer to me.
Of course they are beautiful with light and everything, but also have something universal that people can share. I think the scenery and landscapes that caught my eyes and gave me such feelings have a universal message, like old paintings have something universal in common. They are not just beautiful, but always speak to me to take me to beyond where I am.

Also, like paintings, I always love to have a sense of poetry in my works. I love when it has some space for the beholders to dream like reading poetry. Thus I do not eagerly explain the details about each of my pictures since I feel telling all the facts about the pictures get beholders back to the reality. I want to leave all the freedom to the beholders to feel or dream from the photographs.

In this way, photographs can be a window to go somewhere, and this is what I love about photography.

I am still on the way, and have to work a lot more to realize what I want to do, but I am happy if my pictures will lighten up somebody’s day or if someone can dream from my pictures.