It was with great sadness that I read yesterday of the passing of fellow Glaswegian, the great Jack Bruce who was the musical brains and driving force behind the much copied, but never matched Cream. Their classic Disraeli Gears album which was released in 1967 I believe, was a prized possession of mine with its psychedelic cover and classic tracks and of course the never to be forgotten ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ which I think was Bruce’s finest moment even although he always lived in the shadow of Eric Clapton. Music has always been a fundamental part of my life, much as photography is now. My mum was a beautiful singer and we always had a radio playing from as far as my memory will take me back, and I can clearly remember shows with dedications to members of the British armed forces stationed in far flung places like Malaysia and Guam and Ceylon as it was then called. The radio in those earliest years was the domain of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and big band sounds but then suddenly in the sixties a real change began to occur and newer sounds by younger artists began to emerge along with the now more easily available technologies on which the listener could now choose what music they wanted to listen to, rather than be guided by the then elitist BBC. That is when my real musical journey began.

Back in the Christmas of 1964 my sister and I got a joint Xmas present of a record player and a Long Playing record. The LP that we got to share was Beatles For Sale and my sis was pretty annoyed that we didn’t wait and get Rubber Soul with its incredible Norwegian Wood amongst other classics. Anyway, I was very impetuous even at aged eight (a trait that has never really left me) and I really loved the songs on For Sale. There was a kind of unwritten set of rules that went along with our little player that sat on the living room floor and, although it probably made as much noise as an iPhone speaker, it was considered as highly disruptive and was not usually used in the evenings and certainly not after 8 pm as a rule, except if there was a party and then it could be played at lower volumes and my mum preferred singing anyway as opposed to recored music. One of the reasons I mention this is that even although there were ‘the rules’ using the record player was a very social event and everyone listened in, there were no headphones and we would sit around it and often sing along with John and Paul and we played and played that album until it was nearly worn out. It was a shared time event even although we didn’t think of this new piece of family technology that way. It seems that as we develop technologically, and boy have we come a long way since then, we become more isolated and individual, the technology itself dictates this. I am struck that even media titled as ‘social networking’ is actually done in a very isolated way and in fact one of the key drivers of its use seems to be personal expression of individuality and a desire to be heard and acknowledged. We all know and see how people spend more time interacting with their phones and devices than other people, including their husbands, wives, lovers, children or parents. This is a fascinating subject and in a way this isolation of the individual and nostalgia for the past seems to me to be the theme of Mizutani Kanji’s ‘Indigo’ although his subject matter is landscape and industrialisation, I think it deals with a similar idea in a different way, that of a technologically driven shift from family structured, agricultural living to the modern individual and more isolated existence, almost lost and disorientated in the industrial landscape. This may initially sound like a huge leap from the LP record player to Japanese ‘New Landscape’ photography and I freely admit that maybe these linkages exist only in my mind. I also get a sense of something that crops up very often in Japanese and any other photography for that matter, the search for belonging and meaning.

Landscape photography is not really something that normally interests me very much, however despite the rather extravagent editorial claims of; ‘at this moment, we are witnessing the appearance of a “new photography.” That is how I feel. And, that would be equal to saying that it is the emergence of a “new landscape.” I find that Kanji’s ‘Indigo’ is indeed an extremely interesting work and so decided to share some thinking on it in this weeks review.

I need to get this out of the way first. I have never liked when photographers feel some need to explain their photography and especially when its the kind of academic drivel that accompanies Kanji’s photos at the end of this book. This reads like a submission for a degree assignment with its carefully referenced quotes and supporting arguements and I find it a complete turn off, especially when I read the quote from the start, ‘new photography’, ‘new landscape’, what bullshit.

Ok, now I feel better.

If you ignore the editorial text (as I will from now on) this is a really lovely and thoughtful book that I personally don’t find to be a landscape work at all, I also find it more universal than the editor seems to think.

The work was shot over a decade between 1993 and 2003 and has the flowing form and movement of a journey or trip around Japan. This leads to an early point that I want to make and I often wonder if others will see it this way too. I find that the interplay that Kanji creates between the land, rivers, sea and people in an industrial setting is completely universal and far from unique to Japan. This could easily have been shot in my home country Scotland, England, Ireland, Sweden, France you name it because the underlying principle is the same: people move from family based agricultural structures to the more individualistic life and existance in the industrial landscape.

I mentioned earlier what a lovely book this is and I mean that in every sense. Its beautifully made with a cardboard slip cover and extremely well printed. This type of photography really needs high quality printing, paper and presentation and this book does not disappoint in any way in these departments. Its a shame that I haven’t been able to capture all of the important detail in my snaps of the book but rest assured that this is quality stuff.

Its never an easy task to try to look at a book and make any sensible observations about it without the reader being able to join in the experience. This is going to sound a bit odd, however, photo-book reading has become a bit ceremonial for me. I like to settle in my favourite chair at the window, put on some mood music, have a nice coffee (perchance a McVitie’s digestive) and open up the book. This also brings a tactile element into things and I always find it really nice if the book has a slip cover, and ‘feels’ right when I touch the cover material, it all seems to add to the overall experience. Then of course its down to the more important elements of the paper and printing quality and, absurdly, I always like to start at the back of a book and work towards the beginning. In every respect this books hits all of the right notes and I really enjoyed reading it and, for me, its a visual delight. I am very fond of the atmosphere and mood that these tones and images create, I feel totally empathy with the emotions and experiences as visually communicated by Kanji. I think its far from original in concept and its a commonly explored theme but he does it real justice and I firmly believe that books like this simply improve over time, they have an enduring integrity about them that lasts.

I alluded to the sense of movement that Kanji has been able to create and I believe that is a really important element to support the books themes. There are unfortunately some isolated very weak moments for me in terms of individual shots but somehow their impact is diminished because they form with the flow and general sense of fluidity in the book. I have no idea where shots like the following come from at this level of photography, but as I said it doesn’t disrupt.

Kanji also seems to have shot quite a few of the photographs from through the windows of trains or a car and again this adds to the constant movement and transitory feel of the work. It also gives a little bit of mystery to things and this is a very common tension vehicle in Todd Hido books for example.

and again with people.

There are very few ‘stand out’ shots that would make iconic photos in their own right and I must say that I don’t see that as a bad thing at all. Perhaps the opposite, the whole book is nice and tightly integrated and works well in its own right, rarely releasing your imagination and building a strongly developed sense of completeness.

There is one final personal comment that I would like to make about this book and its something that I firmly believe would have elevated this into the realm of being a definitive book. I am completely with Kanji on the movement and vehicles (cars, boats, trains) and mechanisms (water, roads, railways) but what is missing for me is the people themselves and I dearly yearn for some insightful portraits much along the lines of what Vanessa Winship did on her American road trip. I know that you could argue that its the very absence of this personalisation and the ultimate anonymity of people in the landscape that are part of the point of the book and I do accept that, and it works very well on that level as I have said, however, if you buy the book, and I think you should if you like what you see here, I think you should consider what effect showing more of the people themselves would have had.

All in all though, for me a very fine book that I also find very nostalgic in a strange way and, as I mentioned earlier, I think that is down to the universality of the books themes and the skill of Kanji in seeing and being able to communicate his ideas so cohesively and in such a lovely package.

Ok, I am really on a bit of a nostalgia and musical trip this weekend as you can probably guess from the intro and I have been overdosing on Television’s Marquee Moon. I clearly remember seeing them live in Glasgow’s Apollo as support act to Blondie in 1977 on a UK tour to promote the just released album, how funny is that!!!!!. With all of this in mind I thought I might show a few of my fave album covers in the free art slot this week. I know album cover photography is old hat, but I really like these and they are around me a lot and are superb examples of great photography.

I had the fun of playing these classics on my modern (1970’s) record player while writing this, Bill Evans was just such a genius.

Fave Photo, Jacob Aue Sobol

Its probably wrong of me to call this a fave shot of Sobol’s, I like it a lot but he has many photographs that I favour more than this one. Its choice though was very deliberate to fit with what I said about Kanji’s book as this is exactly the kind of photograph that I personally believe would have elevated his book into being a ‘classic’.

The photo here doesn’t come from a book but from a catalogue that Leica Warsaw published in support of his ‘Arrivals and Departures’ exhibition there. For me its a slightly unusual shot for Sobol in that more often than not when shooting people he will have engaged with them and worked to create his own reality within the photos. I get the impression that this was just a grab shot through a bus window and it doesn’t have as many of the normal Sobol stylistic cues as you would expect. I like the universality of the photo and the expression is one that can be read many ways depending on your own point of referance and mine aligns very much with the Kanji themes of someone that doesn’t quite know where the are or are going but they are clearly in transit to somewhere. ‘Arrival and Departures’ is of course a very fitting title for this work of Sobol’s which was based around a trans - Siberian railway trip, but you have to think deeper than that behind the title as I guess we are all arriving and departing all of the time as we move through the myriad of encounters that comprise our life experience and I think this is what Sobol is really driving at with this work. Incidentally, I think that the book will be released later this year and Sobol’s books sell very quickly as you know and if this catalogue is anything to go by the first edition will go very quickly indeed so get ready if you like this kind of work. I do like this very much and I also like the work that Klavdij Sluban also did on the Trans-Siberian railway that pre-dates Sobol but has a very different sensibility as you would expect. I am going to review the book shortly and hope to be able to show what I mean by that comment.

Wow, we covered a lot of time and territory there, I hope at least some of this stuff makes sense and if it doesn’t, ignore the text and at least have a look at the wonderful work of the photographers whose work was shown this week. Finally, how about this for a bit of nostalgia and a leap in time and place within my own life from where we began this week in 1964 Glasgow to Tokyo in 2014, arriving and departing indeed.

Oh, by the way, Happy Birthday to my dear friend Andree Thorpe, please accept this as a humble birthday gift to you although I am sure you are far to young to remember any of this stuff.

Colin Steel, Sunday 26th October 2014, Singapore