Paris Photo’san
The world’s premier fair for still photography, Paris Photo, had more than 100 exhibitors representing some 500 fine art photographers. Over 40.000 people from all over the world visited Paris Photo. We were offered a panorama of fine art photography from its early days, and presented a forward-looking overview of global trends and expressions available. Paris Photo is a wonderful place for networking with people working within the field of photography. According to veterans attending, the fair was more busy than ever, there were people to meet, amazing party’s to attend to, and loads of photographs to dive into. Japan was invited as guest of honour this year, let us introduce the following photographers from the Asian region. (On purpose we have chosen photographers that are not so known in Europe as for instance Araki and Sugimoto).
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Daido Moriyama was born in Osaka Japan in 1938. He is a streetphotographer and a writer. Moriyama began studying photography in 1959, under influence of William Klein and Shomei Tomatsu.
The gloomier parts of cities, usually hidden from sight by the glittering artificial world are sniffed out, by Moriyama, as if by an animal, and brought into the light.
Moriyama presents familiar and often seen objects and scenes, viewed in a rough brilliance, they depict the breakdown of traditional values in post-war Japan. (read more here).
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Maiko Haruki was born in 1974 in Ibaragi, Japan. She is well known for her landscape photographs. Her poetic, sometimes moody aesthetic often gives us only a sense of the outlines of the real world. Her delicate use of light and water make her subjects almost imper- ceptible. ________________________________________________________________________
Mayumi Terada lives and works in New York. Since 2001, she has been creating her images by constructing interior house models and then photographing them. Her tranquil images appeal strongly, as they show the uncertainty of their own existence, offering the viewer the possibility to project his or her own memories into to the image. (more information from BASE Gallery). I am not surprised at all that these images were some of Herdis Maria Siegerts’ favorites, the tranquility in Herdis’ work reminds me of the images created by Mayumi Terada. ________________________________________________________________________
Ken Kitano is born in 1968 in Tokyo, and has been travelling around Japan, visiting communities, festivals, schools, places of work, families, sports games and religious places - listening to people’s stories and taking their portraits at the various sites. His project has been to make photo portraits called ‘Portrait of Our Face’ of the people in a particular group. Each photo portrait has been made by evenly printing photographs of the faces of people belonging to particular groups on top of each other. The groups includes young girls in Harajuku, office workers in Tokyo, people on isolated islands in the South, fishermen of Boso Peninsula and others. The more faces get printed, the more the contours of an individual become blurred and the expression and age more ambiguous in the final portrait. More info at Gallery MEM, see also mr Ken Kitao’s homepage (it is in japaneese, scroll down to see more images)
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Yasumasa Morimura is born in Japan in 1951. “Art is basically enter- tainment” he says, “Even Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were entertainers. In that way, I am an entertainer and want to make art that is fun.” (find the entire interview by Monty DiPietro here).
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Tomoko Sawada is born in Japan in 1977. She is a fast-rising star in Japan’s contemporary photography scene. Her self-portraits from the past decade explore the endless permutations of a national female identity. “Can these pictures prove that I am who I am?” The answer is that not one of these pictures can do that. The peculiar nature of photography is that it copies reality, but also can’t copy reality.” (read interview from Artcrush here)
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The BMW-price winning work Yao Lu (born in 1967 in Beijing) Landscape part I – Ancient Spring Time Fey, 2006 is part of a series of digitally manipulated landscape images. Yau Lu photographs mounds of garbage covered in green protective nets which he assembles and reworks by computer to create landscapes shrouded in the mist, inspired by traditional Chinese paintings. Lying somewhere between painting and photography, between the past and the present, Yao Lu’s work speaks of the radical mutations affecting nature in China, subjected to urbanization and the ecological threats that endanger the environment. See www.artdaily.com for full story.
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And last, but not least: the man who can bring an exhibition with him in a shoe-box; mr Masao Yamamoto (born 1957 in Gamagori City in Aichi Prefecture, Japan). Sensual and beautiful small images he puts together as wonderful poems – often mounting them directly on the wall. (Simplicity is sometimes the only way) ”When looking at my installation, I would like the viewer not to try to understand. Rather, as a landscape, for example, please just view or take a look. Haiku Moment is a translation of the moment when a haiku takes shape, and it is probably a moment that comes to you suddenly, striking your feelings. Likewise, my installation often reveals its story in front of my eyes at the last minute before the de-installation. It is difficult, however, to describe it by words.” Read more on his website.
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Some people say that the best photograph in the world is not yet created, a saying that keeps most photographers continiously on their toes. I agree, but in Galerie ‘VU I was introduced to an image that tops my list so far. So, leaving the Asian Photographers, there is one single photograph I would love to point out; grace and death and all inbetween, captured in one single image; “The woman who died in her sleep – 1972″ by photographer Jeffrey Silverthorne (born on Honolulu, USA in 1957).
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And then, you might wonder, how would a Norwegian photographer interpretate the Japaneese society? You are more than welcome to enjoy Christian Houges “Okurimono”, beeing his most recent body of work, created in the Japaneese city’s Osaka, Tokyo and Kyoto. According to Erling Bugge; ”Christian Houge guides us into a mystery. It resides between the ritualized shapes of the traditional and withdrawn Zen garden in Kyoto, and the equally ritualized spaces of futuristic, urban Tokyo. For a westerner, Japan might look familiar, since what is held up for us looks like a futuristic spectacle somehow grounded in a western imagination.” Enjoy Erling Bugges text HERE, and the OKURIMONO series HERE.
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Finally we would like to share an amazing photo-site www.lensculture.com – If you have read this far, you will love it – bookmark it immediately! It founded an run by Jim and Millie Casper. Lens Culture is an international online magazine celebrating contemporary photography, art, media, and world cultures. Lens Culture features the work of photographers from all continents and various points of view from documentary to fine art. Discover well-written essays, analysis and criticism about photography and culture, as well as audio interviews with photographers, reviews of exhibitions, and a new section of photo book reviews. Lens Culture attracts visitors from more than 100 countries. Thank you for sharing your love to photography with us all! (Lensculture features story’s on the Norwegian photographers Catherine Cameron (on her solo-show at Galerie Plume in Paris right now) her husband Øyvind Hjelmen and our own Christian Houge – enjoy!)