Walking to the past

i walked around shikoku on the 88-temple henro over 4 years, each time for around 10 days. at a walking pace, i saw scenes passing by like a video on very slow motion. in this slow way, a japan i had not known unraveled itself in a clearer, more visceral manner. with each physical step, each breath i took, the scene moves slightly, so that i could encounter things in a non-deliberate, unconscious way.
when it comes to local areas, there is constant reports in media about acute problems due to de-population and aging population. but this all somewhat feel abstract without first-hand understanding. in my walks, i came across abandoned houses, shops, schools, playgrounds, hotels, petrol stations, and factories. all in various states of dilapidation. all their former occupants seemingly swept away by an economic tsunami into bigger towns or cities to their different ideas of life. or else disappeared into other non-earthly worlds. in their place, plants gladly take over, re-inhabiting the land.
one could feel that human lives and activities only occur for a certain period in the land. you could say it is a short period if we think of the time in terms of hundreds of thousands of years. you could say the human world is rather temporary, or just a part of a larger thing, a larger realm.

k.m.

Homma Takashi vs Ono Daichi

Images from two different photographers of the same house (G House by Aoki Jun). One makes "art photography", the other does "architecture photography". Different genres, bounded by different sets of rules. Homma's take or 'angle' is personal, is his own. Ono's is generic: his role is to be invisible, to treat the idealised work of "architecture" -- the idea of it -- as sacrosanct, as possessing some kind of god-like identity. He might as well had been replaced by some other being behind the camera, he could be body-less eye-less nameless. Such is the state of architecture photography since Julius Shulman. 

Homma above, Ono below:

Henry Miller on Photography

“Among all the objects Brassai has photographed his chair with the wire legs stand out with a majesty that is singular and disquieting. It is a chair of the lowest denomination, a chair which has been sat on by beggars and royalty, by little trot-about whores and by queenly opera divas. It is a chair the municipality rents daily to any and every one who wishes to pay fifty centimes for sitting down in the open air.

The most unostentatious, the most inexpensive, the most ridiculous chair, if a chair can be ridiculous, which could be devised. Brassai chose precisely this insignificant chair and snapping it where he found it, unearthed what there was in it of dignity and veracity. THIS IS A CHAIR. Nothing more. No sentimentalism about the lunatics who fabricated it, no statistics about the hours of sweat and anguish that went into the creation of it, no sarcasm about the era which produced it. no odious comparison with chairs of other days, no humbug about the dreams of the idlers who monopolise it, no scorn for the nakedness of it, no gratitude either. Walking along the path of Jardin des Tuileries one day he saw this chair standing on the edge of a grating. He saw at once chair, grating, tree, the clouds, the sun, the people. He took it as it was, with its honest little holes, its slender wire legs.

On such a fine spring day, there is visible on the stalest object a promise, a hope, a possibility. Nothing is dead, except in the imagination. 

Animate or inanimate, all bodies under the sun give expression to their vitality.

And so on that day, in that glorious hour, the homely, inexpensive chair belonging to the municipality of Paris, became the empty throne, which is always beseeching the restless spirit of man to end his fear and longing and proclaim the kingdom of man.”

Henry Miller, The Eye of Paris

Tokyo Snow

 

Hailstones left my plants distraught

 

“Lyrical Landscape” architecture photography

A portrait is not a passport photo.
Photographs depicting architecture and interiors in design magazines can generally be called “functional” photography, like passport photos of spaces. They are usually straightforward super wide-angled shots that try to showcase spaces in their entirety, even if it means distorting narrow spaces beyond imagination. In the false belief that such photographs show things objectively, factually, photographers patently disfigure any plausible imagined experience of them. Such architecture photos have become a boring genre with iron shackles so systemically entrenched (photographers, commissioners, publishers) that few would dare decouple.
Another way of presenting architecture and interiors is to acknowledge that space is not about its dimensions, not about its constitutive elements, but about its ambiance or atmosphere. And any perception of it requires a breathing, living person with an internal subjective world. The photographs of it should attempt to present this atmosphere or joukei (情景) or literally, its lyrical landscape. Each photographer would have his/her unique way of depicting this; photography being not an act of objective recording.
For me, the photos above are some examples of trying to show architecture in this way.
#architecturephotography #lyricallandscape #KojiTaki #YukichiWatabe #KeiichiTahara #RikuIkeya #GoItami #showandtell #representation  #情景 #建築写真 #多木浩二 #渡部雄吉 #田原桂一 #伊丹豪 #池谷