Twins

Love this random juxtaposition on the blog of the discovered photos of glorious photographer Vivian Meier. To the right, a self-portrait, on the left, last Saturday's blog post. It's one world.

Word up

I saw this video for pop band 'sakanaction' when it came out. Pretty impressive – I like these real "effects" immeasurably more than computer generated ones. Watch as a single take follows the singer Ichiro Yamaguchi and as it gets more complicated as the words to the song appear in different ways.

Now awarded an Excellence Prize in the Japan Media Arts Festival which opens in a couple of days, and directed by Kazuaki Seki.

Portraits: 4 and 5

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Alexander Balanescu, musician, composer, at home, London, 1993
Balanescu is best known as leader of the Balanescu Quartet and frequent collaborator with Michael Nyman, and still plays, composes and performs. This is one of my occasional cross-processed photos – a popular method at the time to get strong or bright colours, in which slide film was processed as print film. Here it was too monochrome an image to be get a variety of colours in saturation, but I still like the effect with a single tone. For The Wire.

Neil Bartlett, author, and director and performer for the theatre, at home, London, 1991
Neil was a good sitter with an eye for the theatrical. We went for a close-up in print, but this is one I like for his expression. For City Limits.

Design Thinking

This is one of those exercises in design which get you thinking differently (but that will unlikely ever be a commercial product!) Disposable chopsticks (waribashi) are a concern here in Japan – where millions of the things get used everyday. This is seen as a waste (partly of foreign forests), although as I've said before others have kind of opposite views.

But, somewhat ingeniously, Germany-based Japanese industrial designer Yuya Ishida decided to make a sofa that collapses into a chair out of them. (His waribashi obtained, it seems, in bulk from a local Chinese supermarket.) Pretty impractical, time consuming, and not looking all that comfortable – and of course not a way of disposing of those wasteful used ones – but since part of his expressed aim is to "create products that make people happy" this seems a good place to start.

Personally, I like his solution to seal stamps here in Japan (hanko) which are difficult to press on a solid flat surface (which is where you usually do have to press them). A rocking hanko! I want one. More design thinking on his website.

Spotted via Fastcodesign

Portraits: 3

Paul Auster, writer, hotel in London, 1987
Auster's The New York Trilogy was about to be released in the UK, already making an impact after its recent release in the States. I obviously hadn't read the book, but the magazine I was working for was able to ask the publisher for an advance copy so I could quickly read it before I photographed Auster. I'm glad I was able to, because I could choose to shoot a few double-images to pick up on the themes of the book I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Auster met me downstairs at the hotel and agreed to go back to his room so I could use a mirror for some attempts at this double-image. It was an early shoot for me, and I was grateful for his agreement and his ease in going along with the idea. I shot with fast and grainy film. (I was already taking live music photographs and it never bothered me to use the same hand-held, fast film approach.) I liked this shot, and this brief shoot. For City Limits magazine.

A new leaf

A year ago we brought back a leaf from a New Year trip to the Ogasawara islands 1,000 kilometres south of Tokyo (but still administered by the Tokyo local government). The leaf was from a plant that grows wild, and the next plant grows from the leaf. No seed needed, no male and female, the plant grows from itself. (Vegetative reproduction, apparently.) The plant is a hakarame (simply, "sprouts from leaf", as new leaves bud from the edges of the original) and now, a year later, there is a grown, potted plant from which the above mature, healthy – or even now-dying – leaves were taken. Which means that all the above leaves come from one leaf – essentially clones. Curious to think all these shapes and ages and damages all originate as just repeats of themselves. (In fact, there may be not much difference from taking a cutting of a plant and replanting it, but to start with a leaf and see it all regrow seems more fascinating.)

Whip It

I'd write a movie blog except the world is full of opinions on movies and it doesn't need one more. But, I'll make an exception to give a shout out to Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It  – or Roller Girl's Diary, as it's called here in Japan. (I'm a bit late, as I missed it at the cinema and the DVD is just new here now.)

Barrymore has shed any Hollywood skin to keep film-making meat and quietly subsumed years of film experience into an indie-first-film feel. "First" film, yet with plenty of unforced confidence and skill in the direction. This isn't a film blog, so I'll say no more – just to say, rare perfection. All round. (And I mean to say it to everyone involved.)

Feeling comfortable

Japan Airlines, Japan's flag carrier airline, filed for bankruptcy-protection last year and is being supported by a government fund while it restructures. The airline had rebranded from 2002, removing its famous stylised flying-crane image and going for the solid JAL type and a swoosh. That rebranding always looked a bit clunky to me – does that twisted bar look like it could fly? It looks way too iron bar-ish to me to suggest flight. Well, as part of the restructuring, less that 10 years later, the old brand is back.

Tough call: they must cut costs and gain customers, and have (probably correctly, I'd say) judged that the old logo, even with  or because of – its somewhat old-fashioned feel, gives some brand familiarity and favourable associations in customers' minds. I guess there was a balance to strike between the cost of repainting all the planes and slowly rolling out all stationery and signage etc and regaining that foothold of favourable recognition. I guess I'd say the choice is right in the circumstances, which don't financially favour risking all on a new identity. JAL themselves are rolling out the positivity, calling it a "new" logo and symbolising a "fresh start".

One Japanese Facebook friend has already celebrated the logo's return and had a comment from a friend thinking of flying with JAL again. Will enough people feel the same?

Alternatively, one could ask: is going backward ever really a good decision? I'm trying to think of others that have rebranded only to revert back…

Portraits: 2

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Laurie Anderson: musician, at home, New York, 1992
I had an old, 35mm Russian panoramic camera, which leaked light and seemed to have virtually no point of focus. But occasionally it could still be a good choice for taking a portrait (or more often a streetscape). Laurie struck me as a small, self contained woman physically, and the panorama could isolate that aspect of her while putting her in her location. Her violins were off to the side, and this method brought them into the shot without necessarily posing her with them. The violin bodies making a counterpoint to her own. It also seemed a good idea to be a bit "experimental" to match the character of her music.

So nothing was moved around apart the personal (a spiritual connection, I think) picture behind her which was turned to face the wall so as not to appear in my photograph. Shot for The Wire.

Whither anime?

Roland Kelts writes on how a group of major anime producers will boycott the Tokyo Anime Fair and start their own in Chiba (the neighbouring prefecture to Tokyo) in protest at Tokyo Governor Ishihara's success with his local anime/manga bill. Isn't it a strange governor who shrugs at the loss of a major international promotion of Japanese industry on his turf? Roland also mentions a Japanese anime creator who claims the bubble has burst even within Japan.

Dying art

This is an interesting (for old photographers) little film. The Photofusion lab in Brixton is where I used to do my colour printing. Black-and-white I did at home. It of course never crossed my mind to photograph my darkroom – which was my bathroom. I built a permanent DIY construction over a toilet (disused, there was a toilet-only room next to the bathroom) to support the enlarger and hold boxes of paper etc, and had made removable hardboard surfaces to fit over the bath for all the chemical trays. Washing the prints was done under the hardboard so the wter could flow from tray to bath. Then the hardboard was removed so I could wash it all down and use the bath for its primary function – my shower.

Still, I got better black and white printing results than a lab usually did. Photofusion I used more because I wanted to play with colour a little. Lab colour prints were usually more accurate.

Although it was an interesting process, it was time-consuming, and you spent a while getting good blacks, decent highlights etc. I was surprised when the first time I digitally scanned a black and white negative, it got it all right pretty much first time. So I might miss the craft – the loss of any craft is perhaps to be bemoaned – but not so much the process! All the images in this portrait series are now digitally scanned from the negatives.

The art of reading

The art of the book, by Isaac Salazar – you can browse other examples at Flickr, or purchase them as sculpture. (Details here)

Via mestudio

Facebook?

For the followers of such things: Facebook, for all its seeming ubiquity elsewhere, is not so popular in Japan, where a homegrown social networking service called Mixi dominates. There's an interesting newsletter posting by (my one-time former employer) Terrie Lloyd  – an entrepreneur/businessman in Japan – that pretty much covers the reasons why, and where Facebook might head from here. Japan Probe mentions a TV feature which asked 120 people if they'd heard of Facebook, in which only 30 had. And that number has been boosted by the "Facebook movie" as much as general knowledge. (I saw the movie on the plane back to the UK for the holidays. It made me want to leave Facebook – again – as much as anything!)

Fonts and food

Cafe Sunshine in Harajuku is displaying, and featuring menus in, different fonts in a font and food connection (by Hideaki Ohtani) as part of their exhibition rotation. Perhaps I will go to see exactly what this entails, but Petitboys' fontblog reports on it, and the website is here.

Portraits

Moving between Tokyo and London meant that for a long time I was without these negatives from my earlier incarnation as a photographer. On my last trip back to the UK, however, I got them out of storage (in a friend's roof) and sent them over to myself in Tokyo.

As they are 15-25 years old, and so unlikely ever to be re-used editorially, I thought that, rather than leave them unseen, I'd scan a selection of the portraits for an occasional but regular posting on this blog. I don't know how many will end up online here – maybe 25 to 50? But it'll be a way of showing my favourites.

There's a variety of portrait styles: earlier and often by preference, I photographed in black and white and only with available light, so often with fast film. Three of the principal publications I shot for (City Limits, The Village Voice and The Wire) were mostly printed in black and white anyway, and I liked that look. But others are in colour and/or employed lighting.

In the world of digital, it seems incredible that I had to go home and develop and print film in my bathroom-converted darkroom – which then converted back into a bathroom for the rest of the evening. It makes it seem even longer ago that it really is. I did all my own printing, as lab-printed black-and-white always seemed too grey to me. Colour was mostly shot on positive film, but occasionally on print film which I also printed myself.

So, these postings – click on the Portraits tag at the right to see the selection as I add to it – will be my choice of people, and if there's anything interesting or explanatory to add about the shoot, I will. I'll upload in alphabetical order…

Update, Jan 27: I thought of putting a link to information about City Limits, which was a now-defunct London listings and features magazine set up to rival the still-continuing Time Out. But there's surprisingly little about it on the web. Strange, as it was successful and well-known in its time (though not as well-known as Time Out, whose striking staff originally set City Limits up). A weekly, and mainly printed on almost newsprint-type paper with a glossy cover, it's probably not a magazine that many have kept, so all the more reason – in my mind – for me to put some of my portrait contributions up here. So, now not really celebrated, the magazine saw earlyish-career work at the time from the likes of Neville Brody (who needs no introduction on a design blog – and designed the covers for a few years), Phil Bicker (who went on to the The Face), David King (renown for his Russian-influenced covers on City Limits), John Fordham (an editor of the magazine, now a jazz writer for The Guardian and more), Jonathon Romney (film writer, who went on to The Guardian), Nick James (now editor of Sight and Sound), Lucy O'Brien (music writer and author), Steve Bell (now – and then – famed cartoonist) and a host more. It lasted for a number of years, before buy-outs and financial difficulties saw it go under. I was a freelance photographer, occasional picture editor, once or twice a designer, and a staff production manager at different times.

Portraits: 1

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Geri Allen; jazz pianist: April 1989, backstage in Greenwich, London.

Now Professor Allen and making music to much acclaim, Geri was establishing a secure name for herself in music (at this time, it seemed that this just perhaps unsettled the very-established leader she was touring with – I remember him coming out to check who she was meeting when I brought a copy of the photo to her hotel in London). I had liked her playing since first seeing her with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and also had had chances at different times to photograph a rehearsal and a concert in NY as well as soundchecks in London. So I'd requested this job from The Wire's art director when I knew she was to be interviewed. Fortunately, she gave me the job, allowing me the move from regular live photographer to occasional portrait one. Though, I did slightly wonder if Geri herself wasn't completely satisfied I wasn't a stalker (believe me, I wasn't – taking the photo to her hotel was at her request to see it before publication!) after seeing me turn up on several musical occasions. I was happy with the result, as, fortunately, was art director Lucy at The Wire and, I believe, Geri herself.

Polish film posters

Over at Pink Tentacle there's another nice collection, this time of Polish film posters for Japanese monster films. However, Polish film-poster designs needn't be limited to monster films: the one below for Empire of the Senses (Ai no Corrida) is also stunning, for example.

Not necessarily directly related to the film, which was of course sexually explicit, but didn't specifically feature a scene like the one illustrated. Polish illustrators and designers seemed to be on something that they weren't sharing with the rest of the film-poster designing world. Which meant they achieved great results, like these two for Ballad of Narayama and Dersu Uzala, but they are somewhat collectable and somewhat amazing for their suggestion of the film rather then a directly related illustration of the film. Perhaps all the better for that?

And, of course, not just for Japanese films. Below is The Great Gatsby, for example, also great, but exactly why Gatsby is playing golf with Daisy's head is not explained.

Enter "Polish" under "Poster Nationality" in the advanced search on posteritati.com (where you can buy originals) for many more examples.

A 100-year-old face

I went to see the exhibition at Ginza Graphic Gallery of 100 years (99, in fact) of a font by Dai Nippon Printing called Shueitai. Excellent show: one display tracks a family tree of the font in development from 1912 to the present day, others range from hot metal (an original, scarily complex, Japanese type box) to the iPad, and showing the font's use over the decades in adverts, posters, books etc. The amount of work in a Japanese font is revealed not only in the full chart of thousands of characters (featuring only a couple of lines for the English alphabet design within the font) but how, even in 2009, each kanji is checked and marked up for tweaking by hand.

The first part of the exhibition is a large selection of newly commissioned posters using the font around a mostly seasonal theme: a black poster featuring black grass covering a spelled-out white moon in the font, the kanji for autumn mapped onto a Helvetica H, a poster listing all the best views of cherry blossom in Japan, the kanji for snow appearing out of a grid of thousands of small x's and more.

It was good to see the aim to modernise an already continuously updated font – described, perhaps strangely, as "manly" in the intro, but perhaps more accurately as simply "classic". The exhibition points out that the original design was for vertical text and so has a wide-base stance (hence the "manly" I guess) that is less critical in horizontal and much contemporary use.

A well put together. Unfortunately, none of the posters are available online on from an exhibition pamphlet, so the exhibition poster and a detail of the hiragana of い will have to do here.

Committee cubed

Now we can all comment on a new design via the web, the Olympic logo is subject to three committees expressing opinions – the design agency, the Olympic committee, and the committee of comment.  

The Guardian and Guardian readers join in with the latest here. (While another, associated "controversy" is raised here, for example.)

Seijin Day

Today was Seijin Day in Japan (Coming-of-age Day, for those turning 20 in the year). It's an unexpected national holiday after just finishing the new year holidays. With my travelling back to England for Christmas and New Year, this year's holiday was even more unexpected than usual for me. I'd forgotten about it completely. When someone first mentioned seijin (成人) I thought for a moment that they meant "alien" which is also seijin (星人) in Japanese. With its fewer sounds, same-sound words are frequent in the Japanese language, but often pass the Japanese by unless they are actually thinking of puns (which is a comedic and poetic pastime). Japanese is definitely a visual and contextual language compared to English

Having forgotten, I didn't go out to photograph anybody this year. In 2009 I went to the local town hall, where people gather for a ceremony. The woman above exclaimed, "Ah, gaijin!" and turned to pose for the shot above. It's hard to mingle unobtrusively in a Japanese crowd. A couple of weeks later a shop assistant at the local Tsutaya DVD store some kilometres from the town hall asked if I was a photographer: she said she recognised me from outside the town hall on Seijin Day.

Some writers are potatoes

Interesting to see this clip of Paul Auster answer a question about how well different writers translate. Most readers read many books in translation – its part of how I got interested in Japan, via the books of Yukio Mishima. (Mishima worked closely with translators, turning Gogo no Eiko – The Afternoon Towing – into The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, for example.)  And I have seen many a movie with subtitles. (Though I once showed the Nic Roeg movie Don't Look Now on DVD to Japanese friends who complained of the ordinary conversation between the characters: but then Donald Sutherland's character's response to a point by Julie Christie, "Nothing is what it seems", was translated as "Obviously", the exact opposite of its meaning and the set-up such lines play! That, however, was simply careless translation.)

You can watch the whole Paul Auster/Motoyuki Shibata presentation about translation online. But though I would have gone to the actual presentation, the internet can't hold my attention for that long…