I recently found some photographs that I really liked. They can’t be seen online yet, but I will be talking about them more in the future. The concept of the series is, what if Japan’s Showa period had never ended, and continued up until the present day? For background: Japan uses the Western style year system (2011) as well as the imperial system (Heisei 23). The title of the work was “Showa 88,” because Showa was the period before Heisei, but this is really not important, Wikipedia has more info if you are interested. The point is that, at the gallery talk, someone asked the photographer: “well, you’re calling this work Showa 88, but 2011 doesn’t translate to Showa 88. This year would actually be Showa 86, and you have a photo of the earthquake damage in your book, so wouldn’t people know that you took it this year.”

To which I dimly thought, but did not formulate in time to say: “What a short-sighted comment, as if there will not be plenty of areas that still look like that in 2013, or 2023…”