As promised last week, and given that I am in Tokyo this weekend, I wanted to have a quick look at my two book purchases from the Obscura Festival in Georgetown; Masako Tomiya’s ‘Tsugara’ and Hajime Kimura’s ‘Tokyo Etude’. These are very different books both physically and stylistically and they provide a very interesting contrast on contempory Japanese photography. First up Masako and her debut book ‘Tsugara’.

Tsugara

Before I start to speak about the book itself a quick cautionary note about the illustrative shots that I take to give some flavour of the content and style, these are simple shots taken with my small point and shoot and saved down to lower resolution for the blog. I have neither the capability or patience to reproduce the shots exactly as they appear and its difficult to show the delicacy of Masako’s printing in her book so please bear that in mind and it might be best to go to her website to see the photos reproduced there or better still, buy the book and see the quality for yourself.

Now that I have that off my chest, on to the book itself. What I like about the book pairing reviewed this week is that they are both books by young, emerging Japanese photographers yet they show a contemporary view and development of more traditional Japanese styles and themes. They also to my mind have a very male and female orientation and that again makes for an interesting contrast. Masako’s book was shot over eleven years and Tsugaru is the place where she was born and raised and I believe that connection is extremely important to the delicate and for me, very feminine style of the book.

Something that really stands out about the book to me is its pacing and the sense of memory and passing time that Masako has created here. I don’t think that you can do that in short projects or controlled concepts, it takes time and lots of shooting over repeated visits to achieve that feel. Masako does of course use the vehicle of seasons to support that effect and that is I believe entirely appropriate and I am encouraged that the book ends on a new beginning and traditional blossom rebirth for its last photo. Throughout the book though is the sense of closeness to the land and its contours and movements shown with a light and delicate touch.

I think its the delicacy and lack of volume in the photographs that enchants me about the book as a whole. There are no attention seeking shots in here that disrupt or don’t play their part in creating the overall mood and timeless sensibility of the book. I read Vanessa WInship say somewhere that she didn’t like ‘shouty’ shots and I get a similar sense of flow and lulling quietness from this book because of that.

As you can tell, this is a book that I have enjoyed and I really appreciated seeing the large scale prints in Masako’s exhibition which were very impressive. There is something wondrous to me about large, nicely printed square photographs and I visited the show several times because of that.
There are also unfortunately for me some short passages and a number of individual shots in the book that in my opinion fall well below the standard of her best work and thats a shame but I can imagine that Masako had a big challenge on her hands to try not to duplicate or overdo themes and they don’t block the flow or spoil the overall effect so I think it would be churlish to dwell on them rather than focus on what works well in the book.

I hope this short look at Tsugara gives at least a little insight into the book and I wish I had spoken more to Misako about the book when I met her but it takes me a while to absorb things and I had to read the book and visit the show a number of times to be able to form my own views on it.

All in all then a very nice book and a great debut for Masako, her development and, in a way modernising, of some more traditional Japanese themes creates a delicate and sensitive relationship with the land, nature and of course its people through her vision. I am interested to see what else she is up to and I hope we don’t have to wait another eleven years for her next book.

Now to the second book in the review this week and it’s Hajime Kimura’s Tokyo Etude.

Tokyo Etude

As I said at the introduction, the lovely thing about the two books reviewed this week is how different they are in construction, pace, mood and purpose.
Tokyo Etude’s creator Hajime is also a young emerging Japanese photographer and he is developing a reputation for his delightful and very personal handmade books of which Tokyo Etude is a very fine example. I first came across him and his work at last years excellent IPA organised photo book fair and I could kick myself for not immediately buying some of the work that Hajime had on show, by the time I got around to it they were sold out. It goes without saying that a handmade book by its very nature is going to be more personal and intimate and I am going to try to explain why I like this particular one so much.

Before I start looking at the book more closely and trying to explain why I am so attracted to it I want to come out first and say that I have a very strong personal dislike for ‘concept’ or ‘clever’ books where the packaging and presentation structure dominate. This is almost always to mask the weakness of the content and lack of original thought in the photographs themselves. The reason I am saying this is that an awful lot of the handmade books I come across and indeed many of the books I saw at Obscura fall into that category. With that skeptical thought in mind I am delighted to say that for me that is not the case with Hajime’s book and, as you would hope for in a good photo book whether handmade or not, the structure and content combine sympathetically to create what I think is a very nice, original and intriguing book.

There is no shortage of books on Tokyo around, that is for sure, and many of Hajime’s shots are borderline cliche but what elevates this work for me is something that I value very much in a book, I can extrapolate my own experiences and memories onto the framework that he creates. How this works personally for me with this book is inherent in its structure which, if I understand properly, is based on Hajime’s very early experiences as a photographer trying to find his way and wandering around with his little box of prints. The book itself is actually a box of individual prints with a personalised sketch on the back of each one and I found that I was able to mix and sequence the prints in infinite ways creating new textures and stories for myself each time. This sounds stupefyingly simple but I found that it worked delightfully well and I enjoyed messing around with different edits and flows much in the way that I like to imagine Hajime himself may have done at some point and I know that I do myself with my own work and little box of prints. I have no idea if this was part of Hajime’s intention behind the design of the book and maybe there are other ways to enjoy it but this is what intrigued me about it.

As I never tire of saying, I am new to photography and it only became serious to me in the last two or three years, and its only in the last year or so that my passion for collecting photo books has emerged so this idea might not be as original to others as it is to me. What I would say though is that one of my primary reasons behind buying the books that I like (and indeed writing these reviews) is to speed up and deepen my own learning and development experience and maybe thats one of the reasons that I like what Hajime has done here so much, I almost get the same sense of living with these shots and showing them to friends for feedback.

Going back to the handmade nature of the book for a moment, I can’t help but feel an enormous sense of value from the work that has gone into designing and creating each of these individual copies. I might be a bit of a sentimentalist but I don’t think there are many pieces of art that are as complex, usable and enduring as this that can be so easily come by at this almost ridiculously low price. I think its a huge tribute to Hajime that he produces these books in sensible volumes and sticks by the principles and originality that goes with the handcrafting, and I must say that I feel very proud to be the owner of this piece of Hajime’s creativity.

As I said, two very different and diverse looks at contemporary Japanese photography that I think are full of intriguing contrasts. I hope that what I have written here makes sense to you and I am sure that some of you will want to look more closely at both of these artists work and maybe even buy their books for yourselves and that would be a nice outcome for me. I should say that I am always a bit conscious that all of the reviews that I write are pretty positive about the books being looked at but please remember that the very simple reason for that is that I always buy only books that I have looked at and liked or that are recommended to me by other people whose views I respect and trust. My objective here is a bit selfish in that it helps me to understand photography better by writing about work that I like and also to perhaps create some interest in lesser know photographers work.

I will leave you this week with my best wishes from Tokyo and the end cover of Hajime’s book.

Colin Steel, Tokyo, Sunday 24th August 2014

I just got back today from an all too short hop up to Georgetown in Penang for the second annual Obscura photography festival, and it was great. I don’t want to go over the whole schedule (http://www.obscurafestival.com) as I only managed a two and a half day zip up and back to try to catch the opening and Yumi Goto’s curated Japanese photography showcase, so I will simply mention the highlights for me and share some thoughts on the festival itself.

I will come straight out and say that I really enjoy this kind of event for its unpretentious nature, manageable size and the fine sense of friendship and enterprise on show and I was deeply saddened not to be able to stick about for the rest of the week to take in the full and very diverse programme. Big respect to Vig and his team for putting all of this together, I am sure it was no mean task but hopefully the diversity and intelligence of the work on display made it all worth while.

This, I am ashamed to say, was my first visit to Georgetown despite its close proximity and ease of access from Singapore, and I will certainly be back, I loved the whole experience.

I have to also say that I also very much liked the choice of locations for the exhibition displays themselves, China House is a very unique Arts centre/restaurant/cafe/bar and was large enough to host five or six of the artists being showcased. The only one that misfired a little for me was the Sobol’s Arrivals and Departures show in The Press.

The problem I had is probably a very personal one to me as I think everyone else seemed to like it very much. What turned me off a bit was the grouping of Sobol’s work into blocks of six, eight or more, I know this particular work pretty well and I don’t think thats the best way to show it, just my tuppence worth but I can also appreciate that the curators had an extremely challenging task to sequence and mount a large volume of very distinctive photographs. Having said all of that, this is still an intriguing set by a photographer at the top of his game and I am sure that it will prove to be one of the major draws of the festival.

I sincerely hope that the exhibitions manage to attract the volume of people that they deserve after all of the effort by the organisers.
On to some of the other events that I managed to take in and one of my main reasons for attending was to see the photo-book show and in particular the Japanese photographers work that was on display. It’s always so nice to meet the photographers, listen to them speak about their work and enjoy both the books and see the photographs well mounted and displayed as they were here. I always think that brings another dimension to the enjoyment and experience.

I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of the books on offer and chose Hajime Kimura’s handmade ‘Tokyo Etude’ and the lovely Masako Tomiya’s ‘Tsugaru’ both of which I intend to feature in the next Sunday book review which will be very fittingly published from Tokyo next weekend with a bit of luck.

One of the other exhibitions that I liked a lot was a double header that featured my friend KG Krishnan and Wenxin Zhang’s ‘Five Nights Aquarium’. Both of these shows were very nicely printed and thoughtfully displayed.

I am sure that KG will have been thrilled at how good his work looked in the largish prints. Its so nice to see young local talent getting a larger stage for their efforts.

As I mentioned, I was only able to attend for a few days and the organisers had put together a very full programme so I ended up whizzing around from event to event trying to cram everything I could in. The danger with that of course is that you become a bit bewildered and actually see too much to fully appreciate but it was great fun wandering around the unique environment of Georgetown and each new location threw up a nice surprise when I got there.

One less pleasant surprise was the sweltering heat at the photo-book launch and I was also a bit disappointed that much of the work on show was not actually available to buy. I know the guys are aware of this and I am sure that will work out better in the future. One thing that I did spot at the bookshop though was the excellent Singapore TwentyFifteen books. I think they are up to issue no. 8 now and they are very well worth collecting (http://twentyfifteen.sg)

My final slot last night was a very nice slideshow featuring the Asian Women Photographers’ Showcase, curated by the omnipresent Yumi Goto and it was well worth the visit. I particularly liked the ‘Circle’ show by Jung S Kim with its haunting soundtrack. Great stuff all round though and a very fitting end to my own personal visit. I know the festival runs until the 31st of August so if you get a chance, go along, you won’t be disappointed. I think that the events programme ends this weekend though so you need to be quick to take any of this in now. Its obvious if you look at the link to the schedule in the first paragraph that I have only scrathced the surface of the Obscura festival and there were a number of workshops, talks and events that I wasn’t able to sample and so haven’t mentioned in this short taster. I sincerely hope that Vig can find both the energy and support needed to repeat this event again next year, judging from the enthusiasm that I witnessed I am sure that will be the case and I look forward to another, hopefully longer trip back.

I would strongly encourage all of my friends who can’t travel the distance to Malaysia to have a browse through the schedule and look through the work of the artists on show, I think you will find it as educational and interesting as I did.

Colin Steel, Obscura Festival of Photography, Georgetown 18th August 2014

This weeks review will be a little bit shorter than normal as I am travelling up to Georgetown for the Obscura photography festival. Having said that, I hope that the choice of book is as interesting to you as it is to me, it’s Michael Ackerman’s ‘Fiction’.

I have had this book for a while now and one of my measures of how much a book captures my interest and inspires me personally, is how often I return to it. By that measure, this is one of my favourite books. I have been thinking about why that might be, and, while I find it very challenging to verbalise, I am going to do my best in this article to try to explain my fascination for it and why I like it over other books that may appear similar.

Firstly, a litte bit of background for those unfamiliar with Ackerman’s work. This particular book is the most readily available, cheapest, and in my opinion, best example of what makes Ackerman tick as a photographer. Although published in 2001 its easier to get a hold of than the in some ways more complex, bigger and much more expensive 1999’s End Time City and his most recent work Half Life which was published in 2010. I think if you want to try out Ackerman’s work in photo book form then Fiction is the way to go. One thing to be aware of though is that the book has an interview with Michael at the end that is in French and I found some aspects of the printing to be flawed with creased pages. This is going to sound absurd but somehow I like that and for me personally I think it adds something to the book. That is just the weirdness of my mind though and I guess that if you get the chance you should inspect the book first or return it if you find the same problem and it troubles you more than me. I should say that it affected only a few pages but it shows poor quality control.

Getting back to the photography and Fiction itself, as you will see from the sample shots, this is a very dark and dreamy book inhabited by the shadows, ghosts and sometimes demons of Ackerman’s reality. This is an extremely important point to grasp though, and the more I learn about photography, the more crucial I believe it is to photograph your own reality and not the ‘expected’ or superficial aspects of reality that are obvious to everyone, that can only result in the alarm bell warning of what Anders Petersen called ‘the prize winning shots’ that he advised to avoid at all costs as they will undoubtedly be stylish and well composed but devoid of anything of real lasting value or insight because they are thought up and not instinctive reflections of your own world. I think that this is one of the fundamental aspects of the book that keeps me coming back to it because I can also recognise and relate to that reality in all of its brutal honesty and swirling darkness.

Ackerman is known for an approach that he calls ‘Introspective photography’ and indeed that is the title he uses for some of his workshops. He is of course not alone in that approach and I firmly believe that this is what other photographers that I admire greatly like Petersen, Sobol, Bazan and many others are doing, they are photographing their loves, fears, longings and desires, in other words shooting from inside, their personal reality.

It would be all to easy to mistake the form of this book as a more sanitised version of a D’Agata nightmare but I don’t see it like that at all. Firstly, remember that this is a work from 2001 and I also think the narrative is far superior. I get really stuck with D’Agata once I get over the initial shock I find the repetitiveness really boring. Apart from his wonderful ‘Valparaiso’ book I simply find that the books don’t hold my interest and I certainly don’t go back to them very often. That is just my personal view of course and I think that book volume sales would tell another story. What I like about Fiction though is the apparent lack of structure, there is no tight concept or project at play here, it looks, and importantly for me, feels like it a set of unconnected photographs that somehow come together to form a strange but fascinating tale that can be subtly different at each return viewing.

As with other books that I like, Fiction is nice and simple in physical construction and it doesn’t have to rely on presentation tricks to provoke interest. The content and photographic form say it all. I also think that the book can be as simple or complex as you (as a viewer) want and that is one of my fascinations with it, it can be flicked through and enjoyed or studied in depth depending on your mood.

I want to draw this short taster for Ackerman’s Fiction to a close now and I hope that the shots I have chosen and some of the descriptive text at least informs in a small way and at best will stimulate some interest to have a closer look at Michael’s work or perhaps buy this reasonably priced and very rewarding book.

As I mentioned, I am writing this from Georgetown in Malaysia where I came up for the Obscura festival. There are a number of very interesting works on show including by my friend KG Krishnan, Sobol and a number of Japanese works brought together by Yumi Goto. It all looks great and I can’t wait to see the exhibitions and hopefully pick up a few books for future reviews as I go.

Colin Steel Georgetown, Sunday 17th August 2014