When you hear the term photo magazine, it is difficult to not immediately jump onto the association of a colorful, glossy and above all, camera- and ad-guzzling publication we are all too familiar with. However, when Atsushi Fujiwara, photographer, photo studio manager and publisher of Asphalt contacted us to present the photo magazine he is publishing, I was very pleasantly surprised.

Fujiwara left behind a successful career and sold off a chain of restaurants he had started up, to venture into the world of photography by opening a hire photo studio catering for high end advertising and commercial photography clients. Since he has no formal background in photography, he has the benefit of an open mind when looking at other photographers. Looking at the commercial work going on in the studio on a daily basis, he started wondering about what else photography could be other than depicting a carefully arranged world in front of the camera for commercial purposes.

One night, he went to Golden Gai in Shinjuku [a famous stretch of small bars and restaurants that started life as a black market area in the period immediately following World War II, and the remnants of 60-year-old barracks can still be found among the bars on the street -- Ed.]. In the bar kodoji, a legendary bohemian hangout in the 1960s for photographers like Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki, he met by chance Shin-ichiro Tojimbara. Tojimbara graduated from Tokyo Visual Art College as a student of Moriyama and was “tasked” by his former teacher to “take over the next generation of photographers”. Tojimbara was keen to establish a forum or platform for upcoming photographers in Japan, but due to several factors, not least a mental illness with occasional fits, was looking for collaborators. The two connected instantly and decided to found a photography magazine — this was the birth of Asphalt. The pair approached two other photographers as contributors and started working on issue #1.

– Hasegawa, Tojimbara, Fujiwara (left to right)

Then another acquaintance of Tojimbara entered the scene: photo editor Akira Hasegawa, who had just retired, was asked spontaneously whether he would be interested in editing the magazine. To Tojimabara’s and Fujiwara’s surprise, he agreed.

Hasegawa was the editor for the well-known and now very collectible Asahi Sonorama Shashinshu series of 27 books published in the late 1970s. In addition to that series, Hasegawa edited some of the most famous milestones of Japanese photobooks: A Journey to Nakaji (仲治への旅) and Tono Story (遠野物語) by Daido Moriyama, Heisei Gannen (平成元年) by Nobuyoshi Araki, and Solitude of Ravens (カラス) by Masahisa Fukase, just to name a few. His editorial influence can still be felt by a wide crop of current editors and publishers such as Michitaka Ota of Sokyu-sha, who refers to Hasegawa as his sempai (‘senior’ or ‘superior’ — Ed.).

The Asphalt team hoped that a famous editor would be helpful in pulling in some of the big names of Japanese photography, but that was the last thing on Hasegawa’s mind. He was more interested in finding quality “no-names” instead, as well as provide a stronger direction on the selection and presentation of new photography.

“The Asphalt concept will be exhausted eventually and there is no need to carry it forward indefinitely.”

While Asphalt’s early concept was simply to bring together their own material and that of other photographers they know and to produce more a photo book than a magazine to the best of their editorial and commercial ability, upon Hasegawa’s joining from issue #2 the concept of two regulars, one guest was introduced. Hasegawa was also eager to expand the cultural horizon, which meant looking at emerging photography outside of Japan such as from China and Korea. His main motivation is to provide an improved view onto the Japanese and Asian photographic landscape and give guidance to the next generation of photographers. Asphalt was his vehicle of choice to pursue his objective.

Hasegawa has been working to reach an international audience for Japanese and Asian photography for almost 50 years. During its heyday, he was working with Shōji Yamagishi at Camera Mainichi, the most influential monthly photography magazine in post-war Japan. Even though much of the editorial content of Camera Mainichi was devoted to the usual news and reviews of cameras, lenses, and other equipment, from the start it was a space for first-rate and unconventional photography and this editorial work was perfected under Yamagishi. Yamagishi was a friend of John Szarkowski, the director of the photography division at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at a time when not a single person outside of Japan seemed to know anything about Japanese photography. In close collaboration they worked to mount two milestone exhibitions in New York, “New Japanese Photography” (Museum of Modern Art, 1974) and “Japan, a Self-Portrait” (International Center of Photography, 1979). As ground-breaking as Szarkowski’s pioneer work has been, Hasegawa believes that it still has not led to a full understanding of Japanese photography in the West.

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but if you think sceneries in Paris back in the early 20th century look beautiful and sceneries in Tokyo in early 21st century look ugly, then you have no idea what photography is all about. Photographs capture reality before anything else. As long as we live in cities such as this one, taking your eyes off of its scenery is just another attempt to drift away from what is real.

– Akira Hasegawa, in his introduction to Asphalt III

Right from its conception, Asphalt was created with the intention to produce a finite series of just ten issues. The three believe that the concept, as it stands now, will be exhausted eventually and there is no need to carry it forward indefinitely. As an experienced entrepreneur Fujiwara was also mindful of the fact that apart from creative and artistic concept, the long term continuation of the project was crucial to its overall success. Like a group of friends who join up to establish a band or other creative group, the project usually stalls or fails after the first attempts of producing output, even though it may be an initial success. Conceptual disagreements and battling egos will threaten the long-term sustainability of such a venture, not to mention financial responsibilities and obligations. Therefore the group was keen to define key responsibilities from an early stage, for example conceptual, editorial and the business aspects.

Fujiwara is keen to emphasize his underlying motivation of providing a reflection on Japanese photography, present and past. In his view, despite the enormous general interest in photography in Japan, there is a great lack of institutions or individuals examining the cultural context within which photographers operate and images are produced. Of particular importance is the need to find the connection and evolution path between the previous generation of photographers from the 1960s and 70s, with the more recent wave of artists since the mid and late 1990s. Academic institutions that look at the medium and art of photography are far and few between (with Tokyo National University of the Arts or “Geidai” a notable exception). Education is most commonly concentrated on teaching technology and technique in vocational schools, preparing photographers for a commercial career, while putting aside the aspect of personal expression. This void does not only include image creators, but also the role of the traditional photo editor like Hasegawa. The legacy of Camera Mainichi seems distant in a world where commercial needs dictate or at least heavily influence what a magazine is to draw their readers’ attention to.

Front and Back Cover of Asphalt V

Despite a lack of institutional support, the artistic photography world in Japan is kept alive by to the strong energy of the working community of photographers. Publishing a photo book remains one of the top ambitions of photographers, and since the books are essentially financed by the artists there will be a continued stream of publications as long as these individuals can afford to do so. The only exception to this system are within the thin layer of top league artists like Moriyama and Araki or cases where a school or sponsor steps in to provide financial support – obviously, not always without self-interest, which again will have an impact on the range of work being published.

During our conversation, Fujiwara and Hasegawa introduced me to the concept of yotei-chowa (予定調和 [よていちょうわ]), which the dictionary translates as “pre-established harmony”. Fujiwara explains that the photographers he sees working in his studio to the highest standards of commercial photography on a daily basis have all started with the desire to produce art in some way or the other. However, after becoming so skilled and technically sophisticated they have great difficulty expressing themselves freely photographically now because the results of their daily work are pre-determined by the demands of the client. Their skill and mind are aligned to achieve that result. So when they, perhaps longing for more artistic creative output, try concentrating on their personal work and attempting to produce a photo book or magazine like publication, the results will look just as polished and immaculate as their commercial work – but lacking a raw energy that makes the images interesting. Hasegawa adds that to be successful in producing artistic photography, the artist is better off engaging with the unknown, not knowing where it will take him and, taken to the extreme, whether his work can pay for the bills the next day.

“The photo editor’s job is like cooking a meal with a range of ingredients put at your disposal.”

Asphalt is published every six months and prints around 600-800 copies. Volume 1, 2 and 3 are sold out and no longer available. That should not imply any commercial success as Fujiwara made great efforts to distribute sample copies to museums and photo galleries around the world to promote the magazine. A commercial distribution is also made more difficult because book sellers find it difficult to categorise it between “real” photo magazines and the art photo book. However, the main goal of the project is not commercial. It is a journey for the photographers and editor, a document of personal development. Like sitting down with a photographer friend every six months with your latest prints for a discussion, Asphalt is a vehicle for everyone involved to periodically review one’s own growth and progress. The concept of two regulars and one guest mixes elements of consistency and surprise, which is surprisingly engaging for the magazine’s readership.

Since he is such an experienced editor, I asked Hasegawa-sensei whether post-retirement he finds the work on Asphalt challenging or a routine. He makes it clear that editing remains a challenging task. The photo editor’s job is not to say whether a photograph is good or bad, in fact, he would not comment on that aspect at all. It is more like cooking a meal with a range of ingredients put at your disposal. The editor is not just collecting quality images and then publishing it the way he likes — which would be easy. The difficulty lies in working with a set of photographs that are brought to the editor and presenting them in a meaningful way. Despite having worked on over 100 photo books of photographers, both famous and unknown, the most complex aspect remains to find the best way of showing the work to the viewer.

In-print issues of Asphalt are available in the Japan Exposures Bookstore.

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Rickshaw Driver, Ginza,Tokyo, 1938. Photograph by Hiroshi Hamaya

Review by Lars Epstein for Japan Exposures.

The photographer Hiroshi Hamaya (1915-1999) was only 16 years old when in 1931, with his then-new Leica camera, he took the oldest of the pictures displayed in the photographic exhibition “Tokyo Stories”, which opened at the Kulturhuset (House of Culture) in Stockholm on March 6th. Hiroshi Hamaya was the youngest and perhaps the first Leica owner in Japan (the Leica appeared in 1929), according to Marc Feustel of Studio Equis in Paris, which has produced an exhibition which provides a composite picture of Tokyo’s development from the pre-World War II period to the super-modern society it is today. In addition to images by Hiroshi Hamaya, documentary photographs by Tadahiko Hayashi (1918-1990) and Shigeichi Nagano (born 1925) are also on display.

Curator Marc Feustel with a photograph by Tadahiko Hayashi in the background.

Hiroshi Hamaya (who received the Swedish Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 1987) strolled around in Tokyo with his camera in the 1930s and took a kind of “westernized” pictures, although he had no contact whatsoever with western photography. He documented a traditional Japan with geishas, rikschaw drivers and fortune-tellers, but also the emerging modernity of the city, and always with nerve and empathy.

Mother and children in a war-devastated area, Tokyo, 1947. Photography by Tadahiko Hayashi.

“Shigeichi Nagano’s photographs, also never shown before in Sweden, depict the emergence of modern Tokyo”

Tadahiko Hayashi’s images, never previously exhibited in Sweden, focus on the period just after the Second World War when Tokyo was in ruins and misery and poverty was widespread in the city. They form a deeply moving document of this period in Tokyo’s development. Shigeichi Nagano’s photographs, also never shown before in Sweden, depict the emergence of modern Tokyo, with students protests and the new emerging management philosophy.

Tokyo, 1995. Photography by Shigeichi Nagano.

The famous Swedish photographer Anders Petersen is a great friend of Japanese photography. He inaugurated the exhibition and expressed his delight that we now in Sweden have the opportunity to see some of the rich Japanese photographic tradition that foreshadowed photography giants such as Daido Moriyama and all his followers. You just have to agree with Anders Petersen. Those who miss this exhibition only have themselves to blame. The exhibition continues until May 2.

Anders Petersen inaugurates Tokyo Stories at Kulturhuset.

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I Don't Sleep, by Aya Fujioka. Published by Akaaka, 2009.

Japan Exposures’ contributors John Sypal and Dan Abbe recently had several online chat sessions about Japanese photographer Aya Fujioka and her new book, 私は眠らない, or I Don’t Sleep, published late last year by Akaaka Art Publishing. They were nice enough to send the transcripts over to us, and we present below an edited version of their thoughts about the book.

Dan Abbe: You know, I showed this book to two people – one a photographer, and one not – and they both really enjoyed it. It was interesting to watch their reactions while they flipped through it, like at first they did not know what they were looking at, but by the end they were very much in the book’s grip. I’m interested in the sequencing of the book — I feel like it relates things in a pretty coherent way, from start -> middle -> end.

John Sypal: There are two distinct chapters in it, aren’t there.

DA: At least two, I suppose.

JS: You know, I have always assumed that these pictures are in chronological order. Of course there is no way of knowing, but that was my impression.

DA: That was definitely my impression as well. It seems that way to me. But who knows. However, it’s interesting that we both had that impression. I think everyone who looks at the book feels that way. The sequencing was entirely different.

JS: It is truly convincing, this sense that it is sequential.

DA: Definitely. It produces a very strong effect. There’s a strong current flowing through the book — it’s going in a direction. It could be just as simple as saying that this current equals the direction of time, going forwards in time from one point to another.

JS: Yeah. More than “Place”, the photographs are about “Time”. And photographs in general are fundamentally structured through, with, and in time. Rinko Kawauchi has a book called Cui Cui which deals with the death of a family member in a far more literal — visually literal — way than Fujioka has in this book. But after photos of Kawauchi’s grandfather’s funeral, a few pages later he comes back. It’s like “Hey look! There’s grandpa!”

DA: He was resurrected???

JS: He was — photographically.

DA: Haha.

“It’s not a book about Japan, it’s not really a book about Death with a capital D, it’s not a simple “Girly-Photo” snapshot collection. ”

JS: You just don’t know what is what in the book.

DA: What do you mean?

JS: It’s not a book about Japan, it’s not really a book about Death with a capital D, it’s not a simple “Girly-Photo” snapshot collection. Things are recognizable — for the most part. Maybe I’m getting tripped up on that photo of the hands rising out from behind a table with tangerines on it.

DA: I don’t think that she was really worrying too much about how the audience would receive this, i.e. as “a book about Japan,” etc

I Don't Sleep, by Aya Fujioka. Published by Akaaka, 2009.

JS: It’s a good example of how her images are straightforward but feel like they’re coming around a bend of some sort.

DA: It’s certainly very complicated, but I don’t think that’s because she wanted to make a “complicated book.”

JS: Right, and I am glad about that. It isn’t a book about Japan. Or the Japanese. It’s about her immediate surroundings at a particular time. Literal and Emotional. It’s this sideways kind of take — a slight slant. Not in a formal sense but rather in aligning reality with herself. ずれ (zure) in Japanese works better to describe it.

DA: I like the word “straightforward”.

JS: It’s sometimes a crutch when describing photos — but here it works.

DA: I guess what I’m getting at is that she is trying to take “straightforward” photos of a situation that is definitely not “straightforward” — even though, at the same time, it kind of is, in that it can be condensed down to one sentence – a relative is dying.

JS: I think the challenge is that it’s hard to express how closely this must feel like. That is, how it must feel to be able to see out from inside someone else’s head. The pictures are structured and filtered through her own reasonings — of course this is true for any photographer but Fujioka pulls it off unassumingly. I don’t feel like there’s any real lesson to be learned, or any broad preachy emotive expression about the Human Condition.

“Fujioka is trying to take “straightforward” photos of a situation that is definitely not “straightforward”, even though it can be condensed down to one sentence – a relative is dying.”

DA: I agree. It seems like a very honest attempt to communicate her experience during this time.

JS: Death does make many subtle appearances — the mourning Kimono, the Funeral Photograph, the tangerine carcasses on the beach.

DA: You never actually see her mother’s face — there’s one shot where she’s facing the camera but she’s got this heavy face mask on.

JS: How important is it to know that it is her mother?

DA: Hmm…

JS: I didn’t find any contextual information in the book.

DA: There isn’t any, although maybe if you spent a lot of time with the book you could put it together. I’m not sure. It could be vitally important, or not at all. It definitely affects the way I look at the book, but I think it would still be possible to get something from it otherwise. Sorry, that’s not a very good answer — but I liked your question.

By the way, there are a number of photos with “mistakes”.

JS: Light leaks?

I Don't Sleep, by Aya Fujioka. Published by Akaaka, 2009.

DA: Yeah. I wonder how (or why) they were produced.

JS: There’s certainly a Toy Camera boom… but again I think that her work is different. Lazy viewers might dismiss her work as “snapshots” or “Hiromix” (or Japanese Girly Photos, etc) which is done at the expense of missing out on a wonderful and challenging collection of photographs.

DA: Yeah, I mean many of the photos are certainly unplanned. But the editing of the book makes it entirely different from a “snapshot book”, just in the way those books approach experience.

JS: I’m a big fan of true snapshots (although I hate the term). I have a Japanese book called “Childlens” on my shelf – - it was a disposable camera project where kids of ages 2 to 5 were given cameras with which they made photographs which were both mind blowing and humbling (to me as a photographer) at the same time.

DA: I saw a copy of Araki’s “Sentimental Journey” today (selling for $3000), I wonder if that might be closer to this in spirit. I wouldn’t really know, not having seen more than 10 of the photos, but just as an example of something that’s more closely connected to what’s happening to the photographer.

JS: With Fujioka — I mean, you have a name on the cover and a few lines at the end of her words — but I don’t feel all that close to “her”.

DA: For me it feels almost uncomfortably close.

JS: Experiencing Fujioka’s work is to me akin to trying to remember a dream in those moments right after you wake up. But that sounds like a super lame tag line. Her work is beyond such gimmicks.

I Don't Sleep, by Aya Fujioka. Published by Akaaka, 2009.

DA: I dunno, it doesn’t seem quite that vague to me. Images might be hard to process directly as “information” but as I said before, there is a strong current going through the book, whether that’s a kind of narrative, or her feelings, or whatever.

JS: I’m interested in the visual themes that resurface throughout the book. Vegetation, hands, looking through things…

DA: Dirty windows…

JS: Being looked at through things, like the paper door and the woman’s facial mask…

DA: hula hoops, oranges…

JS: …and arms held out. Also the old man’s face is previewed as a sketch on a stool. Across from the photo of the woman face down on a bed.

DA: So many hands!

JS: And on one page, trees have fingers. It’s a photo across from a picture with hands in it. There’s also tile roofs and tatami-mat covered rooms

DA: Right. Well, how much do you want to make of these recurring things?

JS: I think that recurring elements are very important. But I don’t think that she is a collector out there thinking “oh boy here’s some more oranges” and then fires off 8 frames of film. It seems more likely that as she shoots she begins to see patterns emerge. That’s how it should be, anyway. The patterns emerge from looking at prints or whatever way it is that she deals with the physical aspects of her photography.

Aya Fujiya -- from I Don't Sleep

DA: I agree. They strike me as a (maybe unconscious?) way to order her experience, maybe as she was taking the photos or, like you’re suggesting, maybe after it. Everyone is drawn to certain things.

JS: Yeah. By the way, the picture of the square-ish cube-shaped frozen octopus in the round plastic bowl blew me away and to place it across from the photo of the nude woman in a square wooden bath was genius.
Let’s talk about the book’s design — it’s pretty amazing. It’s big, and the pictures are big. The white frame keeps them separate from the reader’s own world. And we shouldn’t neglect the fact of how some of the vertical shots are postioned! This was the first time I had seen a book where “down” was the gutter for two facing pages of pictures. (the photo of the woman with the apple and the observation point ceramic sign).

DA: I agree — it’s a really well done book. The vertical spreads only come at the beginning, no?

JS: Around there.

DA: I was thinking about making some nice color copies of the pages to put up on my wall. The colors are fantastic.

JS: Yeah! Her palette is so different from most other Japanese photographers working in color. It’s richer, but not saturated. She shoots film– and the grain works in her favor. For whatever it’s worth, I know she uses a little Nikon FM2 with a 35 or 50mm lens. I have also met her when she had a Werra over her shoulder. It’s a clever little German camera that has you advance the film by rotating a collar around the lens. How this affects her photographs, I don’t know. I’d like to think that the physical necessities surrounding her camera operation lends itself to the quiet feel of her work. And in the way Fujioka responds emotionally to places and events, she utilizes time to create these pictures which are truly beautiful. Beauty might not be her end goal, but we shouldn’t ignore their aesthetic poignancy in addition to the emotional impact of this fantastic collection of photography.

Please also see our gallery of Aya Fujioka’s work along with an introduction by John Sypal.

Dan Abbe lives in Tokyo and writes a blog about photography called Street Level Japan.

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Ivan Vartanian‘s survey Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s shows up twice (Ed Templeton, Richard Gordon), which was both heartening and worrying — let’s hope that it’s not an indication that we need to harken back to those halcyon days to get our photobook fixes.

The other Japanese photography books that made the various lists:

• The Joy of Portraits, by Keizo Kitajima (John Gossage, Lesley A. Martin) — If you’re interested in acquiring this 13-pound, 2-volume set for a reasonable price, please get in touch; or you could content yourself with the catalog from Kitajima’s Tokyo retrospective from last Fall.
• Portraits of Silence, by Hisashi Shimizu (Daniel Espeset) — Glad to see this moving book recognized.
• Cui Cui, by Rinka Kawauchi (Tricia Gabriel) — Mind you this book was published in 2005, but who’s counting
• Kamaitachi, by Eikoh Hosoe (Sara Terry) — a 1969 book, but since this was republished in a trade edition in 2009 we won’t complain.
• Binran, by Masato Seto (Michael Wolf) — technically from 2008.

Like I said, not much love as far as Japanese photography books goes.

Here are my very subjective choices for favorite books published in Japan last year:

Citizens, by Jun Abe (published January 11, 2009) If it weren’t for the “1979 – 1983″ subtitle that very subtly accompanies this work from Jun Abe, there would be very little to belie the fact that these photos are 25 – 30 years old. And aside from that information, there is nothing else by way of context — but who needs it? You only need this book, and the hope that the maligned genre of street photography doesn’t get trampled by privacy pushers and the “right to my own likeness” brigade.

“Magazine Work” set, by Daido Moriyama (September, 2009) Many Daido Moriyama publications in 2009 (by my count there were at least 10 new Moriyama books relased in 2009, which is getting into prolific Araki territory). Of them all, I think that the two volumes of magazine work from the sixties and seventies, Nippon Gekijo and Nani ka e no tabi are particularly worthy additions to the Moriyama canon and essential to understanding his development as an artist. Honorable Moriyama mention for Northern, in some ways the most un-Moriyama book since the 2005 Takuno.

Tokyo Zenritsusengan, by Nobuyoshi Araki (October, 2009) 2009 was a very lean book year by Nobuyoshi Araki’s normal assembly line standards, and this book published toward the end of 2009 told us why — Araki was diagnosed with prostrate cancer in 2008, which understandably limited his creative output. Maybe it’s the backstory working its magic, but this book for me feels more heartfelt and intimate than an Araki book has felt in some time. Bonus points for the slightly unconventional binding.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto “Multi-Exposure” (exhibition catalog, May, 2009) Nothing better than to visit a small, out of the way exhibition at some outlying university campus of one of your favorite photographers and find that they have accompanied said exhibition with a lovingly produced catalog that presents the work in a unique way and features contextual essays about said favorite photographer and said exhibition in English. This catalog of Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s multiple exposure collages produced by Musashino was such a catalog.

Tokyo Y-Junctions, by Tadanori Yokoo (published October, 2009) When I came across famed graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo’s book of paintings Y-Junction (2006), which take as their subject the Y-shaped intersections of Tokyo, I found myself fascinated by the serial nature of the work, and how photographic the project felt — helped in part by Yokoo’s desision to pair each intersection painting with a collage of photo studies he had made of the same intersection. So it was curious to see that Yokoo decided to make a separate project of these intersections, but this time consisting only of photographs — surely overkill, no?. But the resulting mix of part “Tokyo Nobody” Masataka Nakano, Becher-like typology, and ephemera-collecting Kyoichi Tsusuki is really a quite wonderful portrait of vernacular Tokyo.

Shomei Tomatsu: Hues and Textures of Nagasaki (exhibition catalog, October, 2009) Unfortunately it seems a very long time since we were treated to a new Shomei Tomatsu book, and so one must content oneself with the Skin of the Nation book of a few years ago, or the omnibus-like catalogs that have accompanied various Tomatsu retrospectives in Japan over the past few years. This catalog from the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum is everything you’d expect from a museum catalog — which basically means it does the job. But no matter. Any chance to catch up with what Japan’s greatest living photographer (IMHO, of course) has been doing in the “noughties” is one worth grabbing, and with over 309 color photos collected, it’s impossible to be disappointed, not the least because it proves that the near 80-year old Tomatsu is still at the top of his game.

Blue Period 1973-1979, by Akiyoshi Taniguchi (April, 2009) There seem to have been a lot of books published last year of work done in the past, but of those I’m not sure there were any that featured photographs taken by an artist when they were in their teens, besides this one. Akiyoshi Taniguchi — who later studied photography under Leo Rubinfien before becoming a Buddhist priest — shows that while he may have been a teenager, the photos he took evidenced a mature outlook and calm reflectiveness that no doubt have served him well in his current career.

Hana Dorobou, by Eikoh Hosoe (November, 2009) This lovely book by one of Japanese photography’s undisputed masters resurrected a project from the mid-60s that even Eikoh Hosoe himself had forgotten about. Hosoe took some dolls hand made by a famous lingerie designer, put them in decidedly un-doll-like situations, creating a book that can be enjoyed by parents and children alike — if the parent is not averse to dealing with the frank questions that surely will result. Beautifully printed too.

Honorable mentions to the following: Gyahtei, by Manabu Yamanaka; Faraway Eyes, by Jiro Nomura; Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958, by Shigeichi Nagano; and Banta, by Osamu James Nakagawa.

What were some of the 2009 books from Japan that Japan Exposures readers enjoyed?

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Masashi Asada, from Asadake (2008)

Review by Dan Abbe for Japan Exposures.

Earlier this year, a friend mentioned to me that he’d recently seen an award-winning show at the Konica Minolta gallery. It had apparently made a real impression on him, so when I next found myself in Shinjuku I decided to stop by. As it turned out, the show was “Asadake” by Masashi Asada, who won the 31st career-making Kimura Ihei Award. (Hiromix and Rinko Kawauchi are two recent winners whose names may be familiar to readers.)

Having only recalled a bit of my friend’s description — something about family — I didn’t really know what to expect. Walking in to the room I saw about 15 or 20 large color prints, with no clear visual order. I remember thinking to myself: “what am I looking at?” Even looking at the first print, I couldn’t process the image properly. Why was it so big? Who were those people? Why were they in a ramen shop? Who takes a large format camera to a ramen shop anyway? And why was the woman in the corner giving the camera such a strange, knowing smile?

“I couldn’t process the image properly. Who were those people? Why were they in a ramen shop? Who takes a large format camera to a ramen shop anyway?”

Soon I remembered the concept behind the show: Asada takes portraits of his family (in Japanese, the “Asadake”) in highly staged situations, often engaged in activities that would have some resonance for a Japanese audience: working at a ramen shop, gathering at a school assembly, campaigning for votes in a white van, and so on. (It’s worth noting that others are less specifically Japanese, like playing in a rock band, reporting a news story on TV, or fixing up a car.)

It seems to me that the intent of using these activities is not to comment on contemporary Japanese culture, as they’re never scrutinized in any serious way. Rather, they are a medium through which Asada can heighten the feeling of his portraits. Using these artificial situations brings out the personalities of the members of his family, and also creates a relationship between the work and its audience.

Masashi Asada, from Asadake (2008)

To create these portraits, Asada had to put his family into some fairly strange situations. For example, how often do you pretend to be on the set of a fashion shoot with your family? The obvious relish with which Asada’s parents (an older couple) tear into their roles in this image is what makes it work. As a model being photographed, the mother wears a glamorous all black outfit, and two gaudy purses more likely to be found on a woman at least half her age. She affects an almost contemptous look, while the father, an art director, sports a bowler hat, a ludicrous shawl of some sort, and a posture that suggests, “I’m thinking very deeply about what’s going on here.” Throughout the work, the audience finds the family wearing silly outfits, or pretending to be something they’re obviously not. This reveals the person to the audience—the mother’s come-hither pose communicates something tangible about her ability to take herself seriously. Depending on the situation, there can be genuine feelings of humor, warmth, or seriousness in the way that the subject approaches their role. This feeling breaks through the artificial conceit of the scene.

Masashi Asada, from Asadake (2008)

Asada’s work makes it easy for the audience to establish a relationship with his family. Although the scenes are obviously staged—and there can only be an initial, fleeting doubt about this—they play a small but useful trick on the audience. In an uncanny way, it’s as if the audience already knows them from the beginning: here are the farmers you see when you visit your grandma in the countryside, here are the drunk office workers you see around midnight, here is the staff at your local ramen shop. Taking an American audience, for example, scenes at a drive-through fast food restaurant, a high school football game, or the parking lot of a big box retailer could produce the same effect. Even if you don’t love those things, they would be immediately recognizable in the way that a white political campaign van will be recognizable to anyone who lives in Japan. Asada effectively removes a barrier to identification with his subjects by placing them in these situations.

Masashi Asada, from Asadake (2008)

The charm of “Asadake” is that it seems as though everyone could be about to break into laughter. This is actually the case in the ramen shop photo, where the mother gives the camera a sly grin, but it’s even more pronounced in the political campaign van photo, where everyone is cracking up. Each person shows the role they are playing, but they show themselves as well. It’s not a surprise that this image got quite a lot of attention at the gallery, where people would come up to it and share in the absurdly joyous moment.

Masashi Asada, from Asadake (2008)

The audience at the Konica Minolta exhibition was certainly in tune with the humor running through Asadake. Almost without fail, people walking into the gallery would stop for a few seconds, figure out what was going on, and then laugh all the way through the series. The feeling of walking through an exhibition where most people were laughing, gesturing at a photo, or calling a friend over to see something outrageous was certainly much different than most photography exhibits I’ve seen. In such an atmosphere, it was hard to not feel close to the subjects of the work. I haven’t ever heard of such a thing, but the exhibit felt like a getting-to-know-you party for the Asadas.

You can purchase a copy of Asadake (The Asadas) in the Japan Exposures Bookstore.

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Never meet your heroes — or so they say. Those who do live on to tell the tale. About twenty years ago, I remember it being a cold winter’s day as I once more browsed the photography section of the public library in central Frankfurt, Germany. My interest in the medium was just firming, and like all of us I was trying to take in as much as I could, on technique and on the art. I knew little about the ‘masters’, much less about Japan and its contributions. Nonetheless, I found myself strongly attracted to a book by a photographer, whose name I was not even sure how to pronounce; it meant nothing to me at the time and yet for quite a while afterwards, when being asked, I would name him as my favourite photographic artist. The book was called Embrace by Eikoh Hosoe.

Last week Japan Exposures were invited to the launch of a new book by Hosoe titled Hana Dorobou (「花泥棒」, lit. Flower Thief). Of course, given my own first encounter of many years ago, I was delighted to finally meet him all this time later. And, as it turned out, it was not a connection of past and present only for me: even though the book has just been published, the photographs themselves date back over 40 years.

“She presented to Hosoe a series of her handmade dolls and told him, ‘Do with them what you want’.”

In 1966, Eikoh Hosoe was introduced by his sister-in-law, the photographer Hisae Imai — who passed away earlier this year — to women’s undergarment designer Yoko Kamoi (1925-1991). By that time, Kamoi was well-known in artist and fashion circles for revolutionizing the undergarments Japanese women wore, and was once described as “someone who has advanced the cause of women’s liberation through her underwear designs”. But beyond this, Kamoi was an essayist, an exhibited painter, and — pertinent to this new book — a maker of handmade dolls.

She presented to Hosoe a series of her handmade dolls and told him, “Do with them what you want.” For Hosoe, they were more human than doll, and they seemed to take a life of their own, the scenes he eventually photographed them in seemingly situtations these dolls were getting themselves into — or so Hosoe felt, so strong was their human-like nature.

Hosoe photographed these situations around his studio in Yotsuya, Tokyo, and even took the dolls — more companions than props — on trips to Aomori and Nagano.

The photos were eventually used to illustrate a small book of Kamoi’s underwear designs called Miss Petan, but only 300 of these were printed. Hosoe would go on to make Kamaitachi (1968) and Embrace (1971), and promptly forgot about the project until earlier this decade when someone found a copy of this long out-of-print book and reminded Hosoe of the project. Digging up the negatives, he realized he had completely forgotten about this project. Thanks to the perseverance of publisher Tosei-Sha’s Kunihiro Takahashi, the negatives were reprinted and assembled in this book, which Hosoe considers, as he writes in the book’s afterword, a gift to both Imai and Kamoi who have reached heaven before him.

Hosoe and Tosei-sha's Takahashi

E. Hosoe and Dirk in conversation

Of course a good opening event should be more than having a few drinks and snacks in a gallery space with the artist present. Hosoe was keen to explain some of his philosophy to the audience, what he is occupied with right now and what is still to be done. As the director of Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and his role in the Japan Professional Photographers Society, Hosoe was keen to emphasize the importance of nurturing young talent for the photographic arts. He lamented that unlike in other countries, in Japan photography is not part of art education in schools and went on to say that a country not involved in manufacturing photography equipment such as cameras appears to have greater creative potential than one which does. In Japan, the ultimate camera manufacturing super-power of today, there is simply too much emphasis on the technical aspects of photography and not enough attention paid to the creative side. Obviously the endless obsession with equipment is a challenge we are all only too familiar with. He called upon giving up the Kingdom of Cameras and move towards establishing an artistic Kingdom of Photography .

For this to occur, making the younger generation sensitive to the world and role of photography is absolutely key. However, how to go about it? One of the many possible ways to do so are photo books aimed at children, which there are only very few of. In fact, I could only think of a single one: Hosoe’s own Taka-chan and I: a Dog’s Journey to Japan, now long out of print. On the night I asked him whether he is aware of any other photo books aimed at children, and apart from the classic Show Me by Will McBride he also could not think of any and immediately added that he would love to create one.

Even though Hana Dorobou is not directly aimed at children, the images are magical and not quite of this world. Like in other Hosoe works, reality and the dream world appear to be merging, and in this case in an entirely benign and bright manner. While some of the images could be interpreted by adults as unsettling, I think this says more about the lost innocence of our own minds than the suitability of the photos for children. Or would a comparison to Grimm-style fairy tales be too far off? The dolls in odd spaces such as a broken television set or crammed into a travel bag, floating in the air or hanging in trees, or just the subtle signs of human nudity of the dolls make for good picture book quality that a child would enjoy and should easily be able to deal with, especially when viewed together with an adult. Make no mistake, the qualities of the photos are not naïve or too lighthearted by far. These images carry the typical Hosoe flair we know from so many of his works, but here we can also detect a playfulness that makes them accessible to not just an adult audience.

Hana Dorobou, created 40 years ago, and yet new today. An artist enjoyed by me 20 years ago and met in person last week. The creators of tomorrow being shown a fantasy world conceived by a spirit which has already passed. Photography and time, this eternally bonded pair, with moments that last a fraction of a second, and yet for all time.

Below is a short video during book signing and lecture at Tosei-sha Gallery in Tokyo on November 4, 2009 (lecture in Japanese).

Eikoh Hosoe Book Signing and Talk from Japan Exposures on Vimeo.

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A first look at the Yashica EZ F521 from Japan Exposures on Vimeo.

It’s small, light, bears a quality name and there is a lot of plastic involved: welcome to the Yashica EZ Digital F521, a camera released in Japan yesterday with a price tag just around US$100 (click here to purchase).

Don’t let the big name “fool you” though, this is an inexpensive digital camera that has more in common with a cellular phone camera (with a different form factor of course) than state-of-the-art digital, just like toy cameras using 120 film don’t do so to achieve high quality medium format. For this reason, the F521 has already been dubbed “Digital Holga” even before its release.

Limitations and shortcomings in your equipment can be good for creativity and there are plenty of those present here. However, given the targeted audience and market segment it would be unfair to point them out as weaknesses on this quirky snapper. Shutter lag, dynamic range, limited configuration options and viewfinder accuracy (mainly parallax) to name just a few aspects. Nonetheless, there is enough potential to charm you anyway, if you like the idea of a toy camera. There does not seem an actual shutter rather than the exposures done by the sensor. Since the lens assembly is fixed onto the body from the front by several screws, there might be some hacking potential by replacing the lens with something else, if you are so inclined.

Please have a look at the brief video review containing further details and sample images with comments. More images can also be found on Flickr and a Flickr group dedicated to the F521 has also been set up.

An alternative, more detailed review can be found here.

The Yashica EZ Digital F521 is available to order in the Japan Exposures Web Shop, shipments are scheduled for next week.

This video is available as a podcast via iTunes.

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The premature conclusion is not without reason. Images of damaged buildings, people passing or standing on rubble, heavy construction equipment at work, steel enforcement rods in concrete sticking out, streets being cleared of debris, sometimes even smoke rising into the skies. The pictures often ressemble the photographs from Sarajevo or Beirut; is it because photojournalism from these types of events has become so formulaic and predictable making us easily jump at conclusions based on initial visual impressions? A very interesting question, but surely a topic for another discussion.

The scenes depicted in this superbly edited book are indeed of an event of catastrophic proportions, except that the cause is entirely man-made and intentional. What we see here is evidence of demolition of towns and resettlement of their populations during the process of construction of the Three Gorges Dam that spans the Yangtze River. To create this enormous hydro-electric power generating project of truly epic proportions, a vast area giving home to 1.24 million people and including archaeological and cultural sites was flooded and entire towns demolished and subsequently submerged in water. The controversy around this project was widely reported over the last ten years, but here someone has gone out to record what the effect is on the people affected by it.

“The tension rises slowly, very slowly, but its devastating impact will be inevitable.”

Looking over the pictures repeatedly, one cannot escape an underlying quiet, deep and discomfortable tension emitting from the photos. This is exercabated by the fact that this not a sudden, big bang event. The tension rises slowly, very slowly, but its devastating impact will be inevitable, just as the continuously rising water levels. There is no battle to fight, no courage to show, no refuge or shelter to seek. It is the most despairing of confrontations, not unlike a cold war with the difference that its outcome is already decided when it starts — undoubtedly an unbearable fate. The consequence is to internalize the conflict, transforming it to a battle of the mind, and here within the mind only, and in this series Ogawa has totally succeeded in turning the invisible into something visual by means of his photographs. Yet one should not expect anything literal. Using a 35mm handheld camera the pictures show a ethereal quality, one could say a dream within a nightmare. These highly pregnant, often grainy and shadowy images flow by the viewer, like the passing of man-made history or of the river itself, continuously swelling. What at times may even appear as a romantic boat journey through China will slowly enter the reader’s mind and become clearer until full comprehension.

After a while I found myself searching for any signs of optimism in the photos. Some flowers perhaps, or children playing. There is nothing of this. The people depicted all seem to have the same the same leaden facial expression. The single laughing face in the book belongs to an old lady, and we don’t know whether it is laughter of joy or the sign of oncoming insanity.

The work effortlessly transcends the too common classification of photography. Is it art, is it documentary? It just does not seem to matter. Slowly Down The River, which was nominated for the 2006 Leica Oskar Barnack Award, is a very sensitive and personal account of the photographer’s encounter with the land, its people and the immense burden of a larger scale history weighing down on them. History that, we know, just continues to repeating itself.

A marvellous photo book.

Yasuhiro Ogawa was born in 1968 in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. He started to take pictures at the age of 24, influenced by the work of Sebastiao Salgado. The first exhibition titled “Futashika-na-Chizu” was held at Ginza Kodak Photo-salon,Tokyo, in 1999. In 2000, won the 37th Taiyo award for that work. Since then, his work has appeared in many publications in Japan. In 2009, he won The Photographic Society of Japan Newcomer Award. In 2006 he was nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

More images can be found on his website and on Flickr.

Please also see a special gallery of black and white work from Ogawa, as well as our Cover Photo which is taken from Slowly Down the River.

Slowly Down The River can be purchased in the Japan Exposures Book Store.

All images © Yasuhiro Ogawa, used with permission.

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The other night I picked up Araki’s latest book, Tokyo Aruki. It comes in at a modest 160 pages printed at the extremely portable A5 size. Initially I was taken in by the reasonable asking price, but after a couple go-throughs it is plain to see that portability was a major factor in this book’s construction.

Each section is divided between various locations throughout Tokyo, taken over a full year between July 2007 to July 2008. Similar to Aget’s Paris, Tokyo is Araki’s town.

It is worth stepping back for a moment to reiterate that “Tokyo” as you might think is not technically a city in the way that Omaha is considered to be. That said, he kept to a handful of the 23 wards for the photographs which ended up in this book. To be more casually precise (!), the photographic sections have been separated into areas often determined by the name of the local train station.

Interspersed through the pages are brief essays on thoughts of his personal meanings for each area. Some of the sections feature the appearance of young women who have flocked (his words) to him to be photographed. I say that jokingly, but I have with my own eyes seen a young woman break down into tears simply upon seeing the man step out of a room. So “flock” it is.

Often his writing goes further into technique and thoughts on the human condition in Tokyo which in Japanese can sound sweet, but putting it into English they are a little corny. For good measure it seems that the editor felt it best to highlight some of the cornier statements in blue or pink and slap them down on top of a perfectly fine photograph. There are unexpected visual treats here, but one has to look a little harder than usual to find them.

For those who only know the more internationally marketable and nude/bondage side of Araki’s work, the fact that he is a street photographer on par with — and often surpassing — the “greats” might come as a surprise. Due to limitations in printing quality and text placement this book isn’t the greatest vehicle to find this out, but at the price it is a good beginning chance to explore this recent softer side of his work.

If you are at all ever out with a camera in Tokyo you’ll no doubt recognize the locations of a good half of the pictures, or in some cases, have already photographed there yourself.

Earlier I mentioned that portability is an essential aspect to this book’s creation. It wasn’t until looking at the last three pages when the realization that Tokyo Aruki is in part, a Tokyo walk-a-bout type travel companion. It’s “Araki does Tokyo” in a way that is different from his other previous (and often more literal) experiences.

Since it is indeed a travel guide, each section of the book has it’s very own precise map, complete with Araki’s very route highlighted for those who might want to hit up the same spots. If the recent press is of any indication, Tokyo Camera Walks seemed to have exploded in popularity over the past few years and I’m assuming that due to it’s extremely approachable content matter, this book has several print runs ahead of it.

And for those who might be interested in the cameras which he used, a few pages before the maps are devoted to an informative essay about his camera choice (two Mamiya 7II) and (naturally) pictures of Araki on the street working.

John Sypal

John has been exhibiting his photographs widely in the US and in Japan. His photographs are frequently featured in Japanese photo magazines.

He is currently a member of Machikata Sampo Shashin Doumei (Walking Photographers Alliance).

John also enjoys meeting people and photographs their cameras for tokyo camera style.

Tokyo Aruki can be purchased in the Japan Exposures Book Store.

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Tambay (The Watchman) {click to enlarge}

Text and images by Michael G Dougan for Japan Exposures

Let me start by saying that I like folding cameras. In fact, I like them so much that between the 59 cameras I own, there are quite a few folders. When I got curious about film photography one of the first serious cameras I bought was an Agfa Super Isolette, then a Balda and a Certo Six and to round it off a Zeiss Super Ikonta. There is just something about these old mechanical cameras that I love.

So, when Fujifilm/Cosina Voigtländer announced the Bessa 667/GF670 Professional I wanted one badly. I’ve long preferred the square format but have recently been looking for a camera with a different aspect ratio and this camera satisfied my love of all things square while offering an alternative by being able to switch to 6×7 when desired.

Fujifilm GF670 Professional next to a Rolleiflex and Leica M6

As advertised the camera weighs in at 1kg but in operation it feels quite a lot less. Though when the camera is folded up it certainly feels like a lump, just not a 1kg lump. Once the lens has been extended the impression is of a very light camera.

In operation I immediately felt very comfortable with this camera, to me it feels very like a Leica to use, the focus is smooth and the aperture ring is easily and quickly adjusted. The built in light meter also takes the guesswork out of the exposures as with the old folders.

Since acquiring the camera I’ve shot it exclusively in 6 by 7 format and I like the opportunities it gives for framing over a square format. The shutter is extremely quiet, quiet enough to use in covertly but carrying a camera like this does attract a lot of inquisitive looks and questions from people.

Vulcanizing {click to enlarge}

Love-Kim Verlie {click to enlarge}

The body on the right hand side has a very grippy rubber coating and grip on the front and back of the body. The left hand side is coated with the same rubber on the front of the body only but as I tend to cradle the underside of the body and lens standard with my left hand the grip is only of use for opening the camera. This way my thumb is in the perfect position to operate the focus and aperture rings. Focus and selection of aperture are achieved extremely quickly, this is a big plus for me as I try to quickly capture people before they have time to pose for the camera. The viewfinder is excellent, very bright with a nice contrasty rangefinder patch that allows you to achieve focus quickly.

I’m also extremely pleased with the camera’s image quality. I find it hard to say what it is but the images from the camera have a certain signature from the 80mm Fujinon EBC lens but maybe people more familiar with other Fuji lenses might say that is the signature of such lenses. It’s sharp, contrasty and the fuzzy bits just melt into the background beautifully.

You can see some samples of the type of photos I enjoy taking, which is out on the streets. I am living in the Philippines and it’s currently the monsoon season, which means it’s stinking hot and raining a lot! I was walking for less than an hour in the afternoon sun and the camera never felt heavy or a pain to carry. Here under these tropical conditions even a Leica can become irritating as you soon fatigue in the sun. The camera got extremely hot in the one hour I was out but the focus still had the same feeling of operation. With some my cameras they get a bit sloppy when they overheat, but this GF670 camera has been super smooth all the time, quick and easy to nail the focus, and the viewfinder’s clarity is excellent!

With the GF670 in my hands and several rolls of Neopan 120 in my pocket, it’s a perfect setup for me.

Life in a plastic chair {click to enlarge}

Break Time {click to enlarge}

Update 28 June 2009: More images below

Bigasan {click to enlarge}

Dried fish {click to enlarge}

Friends forever {click to enlarge}

In the street {click to enlarge}

Mega Buko Juice at the Hard Rock Café {click to enlarge}

Tommy {click to enlarge}

Videoke for rent {click to enlarge}

Four Women and a Boy {click to enlarge}

All black and white images were shot on Fujifilm Neopan 400 Presto, developed in paRodinal 1+50 for 11mins at 20 degrees C. Location: San Miguel, Bulacan, The Philippines

We have the Fujifilm GF670 in black in stock for immediate shipping in the Japan Exposures Shop. Limited to 5000 cameras, BLACK Fujifilm version only available in Japan and equipped with the Fuji EBC (Electron Beam Coated) Fujinon lens.

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