“If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem.” Hiroshi Sugimoto Today we reviewed the latest issue of Aperture. This issue the theme was "Tokyo" and some contemporary Japanese photographers. As usual, the narrative was complicated as to direction and difficult to decipher the messages relating to the theme. But with that being said, a few generalizations could be garnered from he magazine. The roots of Japanese photography date back to the discovery of photography. This issue focused on photographers from 60's to 80's and to this current day. Photographers of the 60's and 70's worked with a backdrop of social upheaval and experimented to engage their changing world...much like the photogs in other countries. Galleries were not available to show photography so instead they founded numerous magazines that served as the showcase for their pictures. These magazines came and went and now many are being revived visually to recapture the images of the time One of the most influential of the photographers and magazine creators was Takuma Nakahira and the magazine was called "Provoke" Nobuyoshi Araki is a photographer who lost sight in his left eye. Subsequently, he produced a uniques body of work combining two sets of images in juxtaposition to one another. The Japanese photographers over the decades focused at times on work that bordered on pornography then later to the urban environment and street photographers. Takashi Homma used a camera obscura to capture the urban architecture...using the architecture of the place as camera. Finally, below is an example of a contemporary Japanese photographer we all have seen here in LA at the Getty and galleries, Hiroshi Sugimoto. Noted for his dioramas and landscapes Lastly we noted the contribution ofJapanese camera makers...and there are many of them... Nikon, Canon, Yashika, Sony, Mamiya, Pentax, Rollei and a host of others. In addition it was noted the role Japanese camera makers have in parts for German cameras.
We briefly chatted about the globalization of photography esp with sites e.g. Instagram. We finished off our day by paying tribute to a special photo taken "far, far away"....actually 3 Billion miles away...Pluto. We did not talk about the fact that the visual technology is more than a decade old!!
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