Peter, you started a blog! Fantastic.

I don’t really expect much from a commercial gallery, nor do I expect anyone to really care about the content of this Japanese photography “inside baseball” post. It’s a thought I wanted to express, and this blog is the right place to do it. I have nothing against these photographers, and I hardly know Takanashi at all, it’s just an easy target for me to say, “hey, this is kind of a missed opportunity.” As you know, we have different tastes, and while I appreciate the achievements of Japanese photography in the 70s—though nowhere near as much as you, or many other people—it’s just not what I’m trying to push. There are plenty of other better-connected folks to do that. I’m more interested in the photographers that we’ll be looking back on later, rather than doing the looking back now.

I added some information about links to the comment field. Happy linking.

First, thanks for word of “Textile”!

When I first saw Takanashi’s series of un-arty, straight, large-format photographs of plebeian buildings and scenes in shitamachi, I thought “Wow!” And I thought the same when I first saw them collected in his book Machi. It’s the same even now when I look inside Machi. But as far as I know this series/book never excited Parr, Badger, Kaneko or Vartanian. We have overlaps, but their tastes aren’t mine. Indeed I have a limited capacity for much of the high-contrast/funky old work of the “golden age” that gets critics so excited, whether the work is by Takanashi, Moriyama, Hosoe, or anyone else. Oh yes, I see that it’s historically significant and all that, but I don’t much want to look at it.

But the new color work . . . much of it seems pleasant at best. Recently I realized that I couldn’t think of a single Japanese color photobook of the last five years that had actually excited me. Uchihara’s Son of a Bit does have real energy, and it’s worthwhile, but great it isn’t (for me). Oh well, I’ll take a second look at Shiga’s book when I next encounter a copy; I’m not sure that I ever paid it much attention, and certainly I’d like to think that there’s been a lot going on that I haven’t noticed.

Thanks for the Takanashi tip. I will look out for that book.

As for recent color stuff, I do like Shiga but it took me a little while to appreciate her work. How about Mitsugu Ohnishi?

I don’t really know Ōnishi’s work, I must confess. I’ll look again.

Just yesterday I bought yet another Japanese book of large-format B/W by a relatively old geezer. (This one is Hashiguchi’s Hof.) True, a number of the non-Japanese books I buy are B/W, but most are by youngish people or in color or both, and I don’t think that any (aside from Chris Killip’s early work) is from a large-format camera.

When we next meet, I hope you’ll excuse me for not taking Machi along. It’s big and heavy. Syabi library should have it.

For your inner plutocrat: Mandarake in Shibuya has a very spiffy looking copy of Takanashi’s first box of books (the one recently miniaturized in an Errata edition) for just 210 thou, which is distinctly less than the going rate — but still easily over ten times the most I’ve ever paid for any photobook.

I misremembered that you asked what I thought of Ōnishi’s Wonderland, so when I found myself in Syabi’s library this afternoon I asked for that, and for Shiga’s Canary, and for Arimoto’s Tibet book.

Wonderland is good, but it’s too similar to Kikai’s depopulated Tokyo scenes (which I’d just been looking at), so I gave up halfway. (The resemblance is no fault of Ōnishi’s. If I’d just seen Ōnishi’s work I wouldn’t want to look through a lot of Kikai’s scenes.)

I think I’d been confusing Shiga with somebody else. This stuff is certainly “strong”. (Which is very refreshing after reams of anodyne pastels.) But what’s the “strength” being used for? Each photo mildly interested me, but no more; I gave this one up halfway too.

And then Arimoto’s book. I went all the way through it, slowly, for perhaps the fifth time. I don’t begrudge Shiga her exhibition, and I wouldn’t begrudge Ōnishi one, but (quite aside from his later “ariphotos”) Arimoto’s Tibetan work should get one.

i ended up checking out the taiwan photo fair, and as you would guess, the star headliners were moriyama and michael kenna. zzzzzzzzzzz.

actually, it seemed it was just mostly galleries peddling their photos. saw very little that piqued my interest.

there was however a nice gentlemen from zen photo gallery in roppongi who was showcasing eiko mori and a few other chinese boy photographers… other than that, same ol same ol.

oh yeah, Mark Pearson from Zen Foto! yes, they’re definitely doing something different.

yup! mark, had a nice chat with him. the only “booth” i had an interest to talk to.