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review
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Photography collections
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Tokyo is particularly photogenic, so much so that it feels at times as if the city developed the way it has solely to entice photographers. Much of Japanese culture is based on visual representation and its largest city no less so. The visual field of Tokyo is densely packed with details patterned in complex layers of hard-to-catch, hard-to-grasp, and hard-to-process images. Trying to put some order to this bewildering input can be difficult, because for those who live in Japan, or visit here regularly, the over-stimulation of Tokyo can make the eye lazy, confused, and inattentive. Fortunately, we have help with two excellent photograph collections -- each with a different approach and a unique way of seeing Tokyo.
One of the measures, and pleasures, of photography is its ability to change how we see things. A collection of photographs can reveal what is seen but not really attended to by "de-familiarizing" what has become routine and by juxtaposing what is normally separate temporally or spatially. By selecting certain images and by presenting them within particular organizational structures and themes, photographers are able to deeply influence the eye of the "reader," to teach us how to process, order and comprehend a massive place, or more accurately, places, since Tokyo never quite feels like one, single place.
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Tokyo Desire
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By Ben Simmons
Shogakukan 2000; ISBN: 4096814016
159 pages; 2,800 yen
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This collection of crisp, color shots of Tokyo organizes itself around two principles: the diptych, a juxtaposition of two complementary images; and desire, of which there is no shortage in Tokyo. The photos are in fact arranged in fours, two on each facing page, and have been cleverly chosen to make the viewer meditate on the cross-commentary each photo provokes about the others. The result is a kind of visual koan, the verbal parables used in Zen to suspend the thinking mind in order to achieve more profound insight.
The result is a quite spectacular set of some 270 shots that approach everything from aging to underwear. Simmons works with single bodies, two at most, placed in particular moments cropped to focus on singular actions, skipping, running, fishing, kissing, dancing, or snoozing. Four photos on one page are: (1) the white tie on a Shinto priest's hat catching the afternoon light at the same angle as (2), the white tie and folded paper lightning around a large tree across from (3), an umbrella covering all but the legs of a man, which is positioned above (4), a concrete-patched wall trying to cover the burgeoning roots of a tree. The positioning of the four photos creates one complete visual think-piece. The viewers' mind crosses left and right, up and down, over the different contexts, situations, shapes and colors to create meaning from them all. This approach works quite well to re-create the feeling of being smack in the middle of the surprising contradictions of visual images in Tokyo.
At times, however, Simmons makes the connections too obvious: four shots with the same tint of red seems forced; three shots of women's stomachs next to a plastic anatomical practice mannekin feels too critical; and women in kimono entering a temple placed above women in skin-tight plastic disco outfits just a tad predictable. These placements are not without a crisp, punchy effect, but are not necessarily connections that many Tokyoites would not make themselves. Simmons works with a deep sense of irony, which can be a very personal feeling -- and you may share that sense of irony or you may not. But that is ultimately incidental, since if one diptych doesn't work, there are other combinations. Or you can come back later when a different ironic reaction might suggest itself. Returning to look again, of course, is a large part of what desire is all about.
The central images in most photos never strays far from the human body, and there is a highly personal element suggested by this one photographer's desire. Is it desire leading him to pick this or that? Or ours? Desire is rooted in the body, of course, but perhaps the most effective parts of Simmons' work are the magnificent natural and urban scenes surrounding the bodies. When the eye moves back from the body, the questioning, organizing, meaning-making mind takes over again and is allowed to range across broader, perhaps less intellectual connections.
This satisfying collection of cleverly arranged, extremely well-printed photographs presents Tokyo as a site for ironic meditation and intellectual provocation. The short essays in the back by Wim Wenders, Ryu Murakami and the author provide further, interesting points in the form of words.
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Tokyo X
By Shunji Ohkura
Kodansha International 2000; ISBN 4770027389
250 pages, 3,800 yen
These gritty, grainy black and white photos have a rougher, moodier approach to filming the city than Simmons'. Ohkura investigates Tokyo with a Gen X point of view -- rebellious, suspicious, sullen and slightly paranoid. Ohkura's angles are often oblique, looking up, twisting around, or catching successive layers of walls, posters, and buildings. These contortions position the viewer very much in the city with all the claustrophobic contradictions of its alienating humanness.
Tokyo's denizens never looked so strung out. They are seen from every angle except straight on, and when their eyes do meet the camera, they are often more alienated and disaffected than momentarily proud to pose. One junior high school girl in loose socks barely contains her angry boredom staring out from her circle of friends. Mostly though, Tokyoites are walking -- past porn posters, pierced passersby, surveillance cameras, and trashed corners. Ohkura takes his walking very seriously. Tokyo's constant motion feels fueled by restless anxiety and ultimately, somewhat pointless as if one place is as gray as any other. When figures are found at rest, napping on a bench below an imposing, massive postmodern ceiling, they slump as if deflated.
The effect is bleak, though ultimately no less ironic than Simmons' work. The ironic juxtapositions in Ohkura's photos, though, all occur inside the frame; for him, the chaotic tumble of Tokyo needs no further re-positioning. It is as if his subjects positioned themselves, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not, into ironic juxtapositions. A girl spreads her legs beneath a shop window display with the words "child-woman" and a bar code floating above her on the window. A salaryman steps onto an escalator below a huge silver ball that looks posed to roll down after him. A girl falls asleep on her lover who is left staring alone, awake, off into the distance.
The dirty realism of these photos is every bit as accurate a representation of Tokyo as Simmons', yet there is a certain predictability here as well. The homeless man yawning awake, the mask-mouthed commuters' vacant eyes on the train, and the condom machine covered by an immense growth of plant all feel familiar. Still, the realism is brought back into place by checking to see where the shots were taken in the carefully recorded list of locations in the back. And even when a shot feels all-too-common, the flow of successive photos skillfully re-provokes the swirling intensity of melancholy and indifference in one of the world's largest cities.
The title of the work comes not from a combination of Tokyo with Generation X, but from a breed of black pig. The bodies and backgrounds of Ohkura's photos need no further metaphor.
Reviewed
by Michael Pronko
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