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Harumichi Saito Gallery

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A particular school of photographers pursues the art of being invisible around their subjects. In fact, many have modified or purpose-built camera equipment that tricks the subject into thinking that they are not being photographed. Often the reason of achieving objectivity, almost divine-like obligation or commandment, is stated, as if to say “once my presence influences the photograph, it has lost its value as a document”. Just thinking and typing this, I feel antiquated, as if I was someone from a bygone age. While we know by now that this isn’t true, there is more to this. That’s because it sounds like an excuse, a reason to avoid engagement with the subject. Much recent diaristic photography has shot over target by not even choosing an external subject. Instead, it seems all about a Godot-esque dialogue of the photographer with her super-ego. Childhood traumas or other emotional distresses in the biography are stated as the reasons. We seem to grant the excuse willingly – but why?

Photography is all about the engagement with your subject (or absence thereof). Period. Most often life becomes the most fulfilling when engaging with those around you. Relations, friends, companions, strangers, outsiders, freaks. Diane Arbus was known for the merciless depiction of her subjects, but you cannot deny her honest engagement with them.

Wheelchairs are an eye-catching photographic subject, but let us resist the temptation to be misled down the disabled = different people path. What if these are simply Harumichi Saito’s circle of friends and not some protagonists in a photographic project? Almost all of the photos in the gallery show people in them, and if you bother spending the time you realise that these are not just grabshots of interesting compositions or scenes with a person with only one leg that attract attention. There is engagement, and it is genuine interest, a dialog from behind the camera, with a sense of normality and mutual trust. It makes you wonder why anyone bothers seeking cold and impartial objectivity, except for purely selfish reasons.

The above work is taken from Saito’s series KANDO, which has now been published in a new book from Akaaka Arts Publishing, available in the Japan Exposures bookstore.

Light Reading

The New Social Photographer

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There are few good things that come out a natural disaster or other catastrophe, especially one that claimed many innocent lives. However, it would be far too dark a view to take and say that doom is all we see. Since all photographers are as much observers as they are human beings, by logic all photographers are observers of the human condition. So as long as there are humans left after a catastrophe, we can, even amidst death and despair, observe even the faintest of glimmers of positive humanity — somewhere.

It is lamented, that the response of photographers to the March 11 earthquake to date has been weak. Whether Japanese photographers are losing interest in people. I think some corrective thought is warranted.

First of all, what drives the expectation (or even, desire) for strong photography after a monumental natural disaster? Have we not seen enough fact reporting in the newspapers, the web or television? We well may have, but probably want to see a more personal view and feel that it would be more valid, less matter-of-fact, than the factual depiction of news reporting. We want the story behind the story, or perhaps even the non-story behind the story. Why? What purpose would it possibly serve? To help comprehend the hardship faced by the survivors, some of which have lost everything from material things to friends and family, or even a physical location that was called home? Yes, there is a story that could be told, even though it doesn’t have to, despite the expectation. It is a strong story, no doubt, not because of a skilled narrator, but due a scene already set by prior events. The story is so strong that only few will have the strength themselves to face it, but first they have to actually bother and then come back to tell the tale.

To suspect a loss of interest in people is missing the point. Photographers cannot exist without an interest in people, but it is the interest in other people that matters. Hiromi Tsuchida, born 1939, Kazuo Kitai, born 1944, Hiroh Kikai, born 1945, Rinko Kawauchi, born 1972, Masafumi Sanai, born 1968 — a pattern emerges. We see two totally distinct generations of artists: the Showa, post-war generation and their children of the Heisei period, grown up in material comfort and safety. Their views of the world are entirely different. The post-war artists saw themselves as elements of a social fabric and their view was outward, on society, its values and behaviours. The view of the photographer itself is a reflection of those values. It still is, only that the view direction has changed from outward to inward. Photographers are still interested in people, only that this time people refers primarily to oneself. And since photography is always a reflection, we can still deduce values and behaviours, only that it’s now done the other way round.

The above is not meant as a criticism. Rather it is an assessment on the change of the times, society, its values, priorities and photographers within it. Both approaches can be made to work, and both can fail and produce boring, irrelevant photographs.

Will “the most useful photographs to come out of this disaster not even be taken for years, because the scale of the destruction is so big”? Possibly, but I don’t expect it. Photographers will continue to chronicle their own lives. Unless there is direct personal connection with the affected areas and it is significant enough for the artist to care, we will simply return to what has been there before.

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Shintaro Sato – from Risen in the East series

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Shintaro Sato was born in 1969 in Tokyo, and graduated from Tokyo College of Photography in 1992 and Waseda University School of Letters Arts and Sciences in 1995. After working as a staff cameraman for Kyodo News for 7 years, he left there in 2001 and has been a freelance photographer since. In 2008, Sato’s Tokyo Twilight Zone was published by Seigensha to great acclaim, and the next year Sato received the 2009 Newcomer’s Award from the Photographic Society of Japan. The above photo comes from Sato’s most recent work, centering on the Tokyo Sky Tree broadcasting tower soon to be opened in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward. This work has been collected into the book Risen in the East, published this month, also by Seigensha. If you’re in the Tokyo area, Photo Gallery International will be exhibiting Sato’s new work from January 13 – February 25.

Please also see an extended gallery of photographs from this new series. In this 2009 Japan Exposures interview, Sato talks about his motivations with the Tokyo Sky Tree series.

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Shintaro Sato – Risen in the East Gallery

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The term Tokyo Tower is familiar to many (not least due to being featured prominently in the legendary Godzilla movies), but mentioning Sky Tree to anyone outside Japan will probably get you blank stares. The Tokyo Sky Tree, formerly known as New Tokyo Tower, is a broadcasting, restaurant and observation tower under construction in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan. It has been the tallest artificial structure in Japan since 2010. The tower reached its full height of 634.0 metres (2,080 ft) in March 2011.

Our friend Shintaro Sato, born and raised in East Tokyo where the tower is located, has followed and documented the construction of the tower over the last few years. Initially he was simply documenting the progress of construction, but later Sato changed his approach to creating panaromics, often from slightly elevated positions like in his Tokyo Twilight Zone work. This work has now been collected into the book Risen in the East, published this month.

Sato succeeds in showing us the many views in the city that now incorporate the structure in the landscape. East Tokyo, the heart of the old Edo, was often seen as slightly neglected and lagging in terms of development. The tower was seen as an opportunity to support this wide area. As the images show, you can now be in the east and Sky Tree will always be with you, like a beacon that sends out strength and self-confidence, no matter whether you are playing football, enjoy your cherry blossom viewing or boat races, as some of the photos show.

Naturally, the tower project was conceived to manifest a symbol of the power and ingenuity of Japan, especially in light of rapid developments in neighbouring China. One cannot help to notice the other side of the coin: in the same week that Tokyo Sky Tree reached its full height as the tallest tower structure in the world, the country that was so eager to show its potency to us was struck by a monumental natural disaster with many consequences, as if to say “the higher you are flying, the deeper you shall fall”. It seems at least to me, that the view towards the tower has become more meaningful since. It is now more about us, the viewers on the ground, and less about the people who planned and executed this amazing feat of creating this man-made structure. All in all, a conundrum that seems typically Japanese.

Light Reading

Best Wishes for 2012

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We wish you a happy new year and all the best for 2012. As you have noticed, this site had been quiet for several months now. We appreciate the numerous emails and comments expressing the hope to see Japan Exposures going again. We want to make an effort to live up to that expectation. The events in Japan turned out to be only one of many in 2011: the Arab Spring and resulting disposal of a dictator in Libya, the European debt crisis etc. There was no shortage of events needing our attention.

Perhaps you also hear the reports about recovery and reconstruction in Japan. While these are encouraging, they also contain the desire to paint a positive picture when in reality many problems remain: the damage inflicted by earthquake and tsunami as well as widespread contamination by radioactive materials will weigh heavily on communities for years, if not decades.

Above all, however, stands the loss of life. Following suggestions from our customers, we added a voluntary option to donate as part of the sales of the MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II. The response has been very positive and I am pleased to report that Japan Exposures was able to collect a total of ¥430.000 (as of today approx. US$5590 / €4300), which was donated in full to a charity named Michinoku Mirai (Northern Region Future).

Michinoku Mirai was established by condiment maker Kagome, snacks producer Calbee and pharmaceutical company Rohto to provide funds for young people who were orphaned by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami to pay for university or post-secondary vocational school. According to the Health Welfare and Labor Ministry, about 1,500 youngsters aged 18 or less lost both parents in the disaster. Starting in March 2012, those who graduate from high school and wish to continue their education can apply for up to ¥3 million a year from the fund to pay for anything related to that education, including entry fees, tuition and supplies.

The three companies estimate that the fund will need about ¥200 million a year, and each one will start by contributing ¥30 million for the first year, with the remainder coming from solicited contributions. They will continue supplying the fund with money for 20 years, at which point children who were orphaned as infants by the disaster will have graduated from high school. The reason the fund was created is that there is no public support in Japan for the continuing education of orphans. When orphans reach the age of 18, they are on their own. Foster care ends at 18, and since in Japan there is very little in the way of what in the West are called scholarships — meaning education grants — orphans almost never attend university.

We hope that you will agree that this purpose is very worthwhile our support and thank you once more for your contribution.

Happy New Year!

Shop News

MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II

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We are pleased to announce the availability of a second run of this popular lens. It is available for order now in our web shop.

The MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II is optically identical to first version. In this revision, some minor changes were made:

  • Native Leica M mount, not LTM with adapter
  • More robust, thicker focussing lever
  • Minor changes of markings on barrel, aperture scale marks

 

As you well know, on Friday, March 11th 2011, a strong earthquake and tsunami struck the eastern coast of Japan. Apart from the shocking damages and casualties caused by these natural disasters, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station suffered a severe accident spreading radioactive materials over a vast area, a crisis which is still ongoing. Incidentally, the earthquake also caused some disruption to the production process of the Perar, spoiling a lot of about 50 optical lenses.

Following suggestions from our customers, we have therefore added a voluntary option to donate a modest amount to the Japanese Red Cross (or other charitable organisation) as part of your purchase. The initial amount is set to ¥5000 which you can increase or reduce as you see fit. Thank you.

The simplest optical design that is capable of correcting all of the seven Seidel aberrations over a wide field of view is the Cooke triplet, developed by H. Dennis Taylor in 1893. It is named after the optical company in York, England, for which Taylor worked at the time, Cooke and Sons (later to become Cooke, Troughton and Sims). Taylor’s designs, despite their antiquity, are close to optimum for the aperture and field he intended, given the glass types available in his day.

However, at around 1925 with the rise of the Tessar lens designed by Paul Rudolph of Zeiss the Cooke triplet was starting to be relegated to cheaper lenses such as those in compact cameras, due to its simple design affording low cost manufacturing.

Mr Miyazaki of MS Optical, a small independent manufacturer of lenses and camera accessories, believes that a well-designed triplet is superior to the Tessar. Only very few lenses in history exploited the full power of the formula, such as an early version of the Leitz Elmar 90/4 with three elements. He started researching and designing his own ideal triplet lens at the highest level possible, using 21st century materials and manufacturing techniques. The result is the MS Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35, which has just been released. (For those wondering about the origin of the lens name, in Japanese pera-pera means thin or flimsy.)

Despite it’s deceptively simple construction of three lens elements Miyazaki was able to design a lens of not only outstanding performance, but also with a very interesting form factor and at comparatively low cost.

Here are its key features:

  • Very high optical quality triplet formula lens
  • Ultra compact design, weight 75g, collapsible (4.2mm height when collapsed)
  • Premium quality Tantalum glass, superior to Trium and Lanthanum glass with best refractive qualities
  • Refined triplet design with two double thickness positive lenses, superior to Tessar design
  • Round aperture for smooth and pleasing bokeh (Edmund Optics, Made in USA)
  • Minimum focus distance 0.8m
  • ALL glass surfaces multicoated, 97% light transmission
  • Vivid, real and beautiful color reproduction, high contrast high resolution images
  • Second lot of 200 lenses (serial 201-400), designed, manufactured and hand-assembled in Japan by Mr Sadoyasu Miyazaki

The MS Optical Super Triplet Perar 3.5/35 Mark II is available now in our web shop.

Just like MS Optical’s lens conversions, please be aware that this lens is slightly different in operation from “normal” mass-manufactured lenses. For example, the aperture scale rotates with the whole lens barrel when the lens is focussed and there are no aperture click stops. This is not a lens for photographers who want all their lenses to function in the same way and cannot adjust to a different way of working. This is a design for the connoisseur with an appreciation for optics and their history.

Photos courtesy of Pieter Franken

I did quite some shooting yesterday with the lens [on the Leica M9 and MP] and had it compete with a 35mm Summilux aspherical lens. Obviously there are significant differences, but am quite impressed with what this little lens does. First of all the focus is perfect on the M9 and the view field is good. Bokeh is pleasant. The focussing is very smooth! I liked the hood and front and rear covers – nice detail and execution!

Pieter Franken, September 2010

There is no other independent maker of Leica M mount lenses that offers the same level of quality and creativity as MS Optical in the world today. The Perar is not just a lens, it is a celebration of the spirit of photography.

Shop News

Web Shop on spring holidays (Update: we’re back)

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Due to recent events in Japan, the Japan Exposures Web Shop will take a holiday starting March 20th, 2011 until the middle of April to take care of family matters. All orders placed on or after these dates will be processed and shipped upon our return in April. The same goes for all currently processing/unshipped orders. If you wish to cancel your pending order, please contact us.

Please note that replies to email inquiries might also be delayed accordingly. We apologise for any inconvenience.

The holiday will affect the web store and the following products and services, which will resume from mid-April:

Thank you for your understanding.

The Japan Exposures Book Shop will continue to operate as normal.

UPDATE: We’re back and catching up with the backlog quickly. Thank you for your patience.