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No preconceptions

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The title of this post is a quasi-quote from the artist and legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand. It has become my main mantra of late, not only about photographic matters, but about life in general. It is a very difficult objective to keep an open mind, especially since I think that the interpretation of experiences and resulting conceptions are very closely bound to human nature, a natural way to make us feel emotionally safer. Brands and advertising, for example, exploit this longing for familiarity and make us reach out for packaging and colours we have seen before.

In itself, there is nothing wrong with this. However, there are certain times, if not most of the time, where we should be self-aware of our preconceptions, if only to prevent us to become easy prey for stereotypes and prejudices, positive and negative. Maybe we have heard something similar several times from from different sources. Or we have heard fractions of facts and our creative mind tries filling in the gaps. The purpose of this is to help making sense of the world in one way or the other, if only temporary. Would we feel the full effect of knowing that we know nothing, we would probably go crazy.

It is in this period of thought, where an email from a friend reaches me, and I am surprised that it discusses a very similar thought that I have been having and have recently articulated in an article for the German-Japanese Society of my hometown. Many people think of Japan by imagining sushi, temples, geishas and other “typical” things. While of course these things exist here, they by no means represent Japanese culture. In fact, I think they are rather offensive as they simplify and distort reality.

In my photos I am trying to show aspects of daily Japanese life, any and all aspects I personally come across. And even though I am not trying to exclude sushi, temples and geishas, unlike others I am also not looking for them. I capture what presents itself to me, and those obvious Japanese things are just several of many, many other things that make up the puzzle of this country. I can’t say I have succeeded, but just like they say in British news when they don’t know for sure: “The Police are keeping an open mind.”

I am quoting – with permission from the author – an article written for Tibetan Review:

Shattering the Shangri-La Stereotype: Tibetans re-branded
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Light Reading

Found, but out of range

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Epson Digital Rangefinder RD-1 (“Digital Bessa”) at Yodobashi Camera in Shinjuku. The two cameras they had in stock were already sold, at Â¥312,000 a pop.My initial impression, after admittedly a very short, 2-minute handling, was not exactly that of unconditional desire. The first thing you notice when picking up the camera is an apparent bulk. I am not a Bessa R or R2 user, so I cannot comment how it compares to the film bodies. However, compared to a Leica M series, it feels rather large. Holding it near a Nikon D70, the RD-1 seemed to have at least 80% of the SLR body’s footprint, rather more than less.

The shutter sound is rather metallic, not exactly quiet, although different and maybe more quiet than the Bessa Rs – again, I am not too familiar with their shutter sound, all I can say is that it sounded sharp and metallic. When set to auto-exposure, the camera clearly displays the shutter speed in the ultra-clear viewfinder, that I am envious of. The rewind knob as a scroll wheel is a nice touch, it works very smooth when looking at the images in playback mode on the decent display. The iconography on the buttons next to the LCD display is not very intuitive, they are rather cryptic and crude geometric line graphics, not as visual as let’s say a little waste basket or the mode colours blue/black on my Canon G2. But surely once one would reads the manual there wouldn’t be any problems, but who likes reading manuals?

The analogue gauge, which I think is about battery power and other values does look odd, I didn’t like on the preview pictures either when seeing it for the first time. Lastly the “film transport” lever is also another gripe for me, simply because it doesn’t travel far enough. Since no film is transported and only the shutter needs cocking, the path is rather short, let’s say around a third of the distance of a film body, and then it suddenly stops. This somehow feels like an interruption to the photographer’s natural motion in throwing the lever around.

I am not doing a comprehensive review here, others can and will do a better job of that, but these are my first impressions after picking up one of those in the shop in Tokyo today, and the bottom line is: not tempted, even at half the price.

Attention goes back to my Yashica Electro GX, where after some strolling around in Tokyu Hands crafts section I found a round rubber doorstop, which when twisted on the lens loosened the ring holding the front element in place. I am set for some serious kabi killing tonight!

UPDATE: I cleaned the lens using the actual kabi killer product, but now the shutter doesn’t fire anymore. Also in my clumsy attempts to get parts moving, I scratched the camera in various areas 🙁

Light Reading

Tokyo 1934-1993

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This is an interesting and rather hefty book with street photographs by Kineo Kuwabara. One of the ever-returning realisations about photos about Japan is, that often you simply cannot tell the day and age that the photos were taken in. So even though the photos are in roughly chronological order, the reader is sometimes challenged to guess – until you read the caption (and the image on the left is also not one of them, of course). Another very prominent aspect in the photos is the heavy feature of written text, of shops, posters, signs. This is rather appealing, equivalent to looking at unknown products in a Japanese supermarket, attractive even if the meaning of the text is not completely comprehended by a non-Japanese speaker.

A surprising, if not somehow disappointing omission are photographs from the period of WW2. I can only think that either the photographer was in the military as well and had no opportunity to take pictures, or photographic materials became too scarce to continue taking photos. In the middle of the book there is a section of Kuwabara’s colour photographs, while the rest is in black and white. The colour work seems a little haphazard, however. Coming to the 1970s, Tokyo is more and more becoming the town we know today, while up to the 1960s some views of the town seem rather shabby, and still we see some traces of that nowadays.

My only gripe with many of the photos is that too often they seem to display a little too much timidness of the photographer. We see many backs of people or people in the distance, sometimes both. Formally speaking there seems rather little personal visual language in the photos, although I may be applying a value system of the year 2004 with this statement. Kuwabara was after all an amateur as a photographer (if that means anything, apart from only taking pictures for himself), even though a photo editor by profession. The images are however getting a large lift by their documentary value, by showing things as they used to be. Whether that’s enough is for the reader to decide. For me this is probably a “borrow” book, not a “buy”, although there is enough material in the book to encourage the occasional browse if you own it, and I admit I find myself drawn to it in a nice way. Alternative review here.

Light Reading

Word collector

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Just thought I should write down some photographic terms in Japanese for myself and the valued readership.

On Sunday, I am going to the club meeting of my local camera club. I have never been in a camera club before, but the thought of being in a Japanese camera club somehow intrigues me. It is not a very big group, around 10 people, and, as you can imagine, the average age is well above 50. But they seem a jolly bunch, meet once a month and do some outings together (the ones you imagine, Japanese snappers with big gadget cameras all over the place, as depicted here). So I should arm myself with some useful words, to be able to critique some images and explain myself.

Addendum (Sep 6): I have been to the camera club meeting, and it was interesting. However I somehow don’t like the “sensei” having the ultimate authority over what is a good photo and what isn’t, and running around with those cropping bars and selecting a 10th of the original shot. Anyway, my word list helped and I have added some more words, and keep doing so from now on. And I have memorised this Japanese expression, in case I get ever too bothered about what I consider unjustified criticism:

(n) (col) Several men, several minds, everyone has his own ideas and tastes, everyone has his own interests and ideas, different strokes for different folks
十人十色 [じゅうにんといろ]
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One for the road

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Yashica Electro GX

We are going on a backpacker-ish trip to Thailand next week and the question apart from where to go and stay is what camera to take. Pickpockets are an issue, as well as other things, and the last thing you want to do on your holiday is worrying about stuff like cameras. So I did an impulse purchase on Yahoo! auctions for this nice Yashica Electro GX (I made the picture a little more colourful to emphasise the happiness of the seventies, when this camera was produced. Don’t think I am just another superficial foreign photographer in Japan). Turns out it is a rather rare camera, according to one source not even listed in the “Japanese Camera Collectable” guide books. But that was a coincidence, because if it is valuable, then I am back to my original problem, aren’t I?

Anyway, I realised that the camera is not in such great shape after all. With the rather humid Japanese climate, the lens of this camera fell victim to the dreaded kabi (fungus) on the front and second lens element [pics]. I will try to take off the front element according to some repair instructions and clean the second element. Although if that turns out not to be possible, then that’s fine too. At the moment the camera is sunbathing on the balcony to let the sun’s UV rays kill the nasty spores.

I have been meaning to mention how great using Yahoo! auctions is. It must be one of those aspects of Japanese culture where one can feel safe and trust the people, but maybe that is just my illusion and wishful thinking. Anyway, I have made 3 transactions in the last 2 months and with a little Japanese language skills you can go a long way in buying and selling some nice things. The best part is the delivery. We have all seen the Kuroneko vans cruising the streets, but the home delivery network in this country is just a marvel. You can drop off your package in any convenience store and it arrives the next day for a not too high a charge, and most of the time it is best to send it chakubarai, where the receiver pays for the postage. No excessive quoting and calculating payments. It is a pure joy. This comes at the same time as my first bad eBay experience.

Light Reading

Hurray for digital

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From a photography mailing list: I had a real problem today, editing over 100 photos. It as a real delight to work today, hurray for digital

Personally I think this is a fallacy.

First, the time it takes me to select which negs to scan may be pretty close to the time you need to throw out the digi stuff you don’t want. Same process, probably same time needed. Probably some extra time for the scanning and de-spotting on the film side, but since digital shooters tend to shoot more due to the perceived lack of cost or whatever, maybe we will end up with the same time periods.

Secondly, talking of time and the undisputed conveniences of the digital workflow. Are we after efficiency? Get those pics out there as soon as possible, minimum efforts, maximum results. From an artistic, non-commercial point of view there is no reason to work efficiently. This is not a Toyota factory. On the contrary, the creative process is almost by definition inefficient, probably has to be. And anyway, why the hurry? This is supposed to be enjoyable. [Irony hint: I am German and arguing against efficiency (wink).]

My point being that the efficiency advantages of the digital workflow are largely unrelated to the creative process and, per se, are hardly an advantage in non-commercial work.

Just marginally related: there are a lot of people trying to condition consumers (if they haven’t already done so) that anything digital is better than its non-digital counterpart. The term digital itself is almost used as a attribute of higher quality, even though that doesn’t always make sense or as an absolute designation doesn’t mean much, except that ones and zeroes are at work. For example, at the camera shop the other day, I saw “Lens Cleaning Paper for Digital”. We have to use our brains a little more not to fall into these traps.