Dirk and Kurt (Kirk?), you might want to check it out for possible future JE galleries.

I particularly liked the work of Tanida Kohta and Matoba Yuko.

Unrelated, I plan to re-use this line whenever I criticize art & photography on blogs:

“The human elements, in particular, are a let-down.”

Dirk, you ask for tips. I’m not sure that this is the appropriate place for one; if it isn’t, don’t hesitate to move or delete. That said … I’d never heard of Hiramatsu Shingo 平松伸吾 till one day a couple of years back when I had time to kill in Shinjuku and strolled into Konica Minolta where he had a little show that impressed me. He’s a street photographer, particularly of Chinatowns in Japan and (more often) SE Asia. I thought that he wasn’t sufficiently ruthless in his selection but that his best (typically of people looking straight at him) were very good indeed. You can see his work at http://shenwu.jp . Starting next Monday, he has a show at Sokyusha (Shinjuku) of, it would seem, rather festive-looking election campaign events in Taiwan. It’s a show I’m definitely going to go to. No, not much relation to Abe, but, um … Hiramatsu too is out there walking the streets and shooting (120) B/W film.

Here’s my $0.02.

In my opinion, the strongest image here is the #5 “uyoku” picture. The vehicle almost cuts the frame down the middle, creating two individual parts to one story. On one side, the reflection in the windscreen, the man in the passenger seat offering (returning?), rather half-heartedly, a pen and, of course, the driver’s hate-filled expression as he looks straight into the lens, and, on the other side, the white-shirted man (a cop?) veering, headless, away from the pen and out of the frame, as his hand reaches out, while the transaction is watched with a kind of tired enthusiasm by the stooped figure in the centre, creates a strong and lasting impression.

The weakest shots, in my opinion, are #9, #3 and #7 in that order.

#9 – Apart from the hand on the post to the right, I can find nothing in this image that holds my attention. The foreground is dominated by two backs of zero interest. The tilt serves only as a distraction. The girl in the centre of the frame has potential, but the photographer fails here to make use of it.

#3 – Although such scenes as this rarely fail to have an impact on all but the most heartless among us, this photograph doesn’t do the one here “justice.” Except for the lights bleeding into the dark, which I’m partial to, the whole left side of this picture holds nothing of interest for me. The bare feet and the character half out of the frame are all that makes this image, but again, the photographer could have done much more (they weren’t going anywhere…). And there’s that tilt again.

#7 – What I do like about this is the clutter and splash of signage across the print. However, I don’t feel that these strengths are enough to support this picture. The human elements, in particular, are a let-down.

I certainly don’t agree with Jim’s opinion. I think the problem here is simply one of selection. I bet Abe has a lot of superb photos hanging up to dry.

Also, as we don’t know how long he’s been shooting, I don’t think age should be an issue here. It’s not like he’s just turned 11.

As another fellow out on the streets of Tokyo with a camera I would have taken complete pride in having any one of these images among my negatives.

clive, I don’t think we’re saying “he’s great or worthy *because* he doesn’t have a computer” — what we meant by saying a lack of an online presence “makes Abe an ideal person to feature on JE” was that we’re mainly about (or hope to be about) featuring undiscovered talent, and obviously someone without an online presence is going to be hard to discover outside of the select few who can see an exhibition of his work in Tokyo.

Jim, while I would admit that Abe-san at 26 is still in the learning, “derivative” phase of his career, surely you’re not saying that since we’ve had Moriyama and Winogrand there can be no others working in a similar vein (which would actually disqualify Moriyama himself, given that he’s essentially been repeating himself for the last 30 years ). Whether Abe-san will look back later on this work as juvenilia only fit for the funeral pyre is of course something no one — least of all Abe-san himself — knows, but from having met the young man, he doesn’t strike me as someone “having fun”. (If anything, as a general statement, I would say that a lot of the young photographers I meet take what they’re doing *too* seriously). Will Abe-san grow and mature and produce less-derivative work in the future? Again, don’t know, but my impression is he will. Nevertheless I would still question the premise that his later work will be more “real” than the work he’s doing now.