Friends,
I hope this finds you cool and comfortable, if not near the sea, a free-flowing river, or a swimming pool, then at least indulging in the easy pleasures of cold showers or a freezer full of ice cubes. We’ve been in dog days since the end of June (Kyoto sits in a valley and the heat is relentless), so it was great to escape to Central Hokkaido for a week. It was my fifth trip there, but it was my first time climbing Mt. Kurodake, as well as a new experience for me wandering the foothills of Asahidake, which on the day of our visit was shrouded in mist (the intemperate weather precluding an ascent). A light rain and breezy temperatures followed us most of the way, to the lavender fields of Biei, the zoo in Asahikawa, and elsewhere. Because the area is volcanic, there are some terrific onsen, including one where we bathed in the mountain wilderness all by ourselves. One of my favorite excursions was the port town of Otaru, where we rode bikes along a harbor front suffering terminal but beautiful decline, a rolling tableau of wabi-sabi cracked colors, roughened wood and rusty metal.
Since returning, my son has been on summer break. The first few days are a bit of a transition, getting used to having to adjust my schedule to focus on parenting. Tennbo is seven years old and it is a joy to witness his imagination thriving and his confidence growing in all things. Like many children, he’s in the throes of his Minecraft phase, which I let him enjoy provided we play board games and read together, as well as that he works on his drawings, poems and English-reading skills. We’re often reading side-by-side, as Tennbo is quite adept in Japanese (and has a massive stack of Doraemon books available for comic pleasures).
Because we reside in Japan, his English literacy is wholly my responsibility, and up to the beginning of this year, it has been a struggle engaging him to make sense of the Roman alphabet. But his progress over the past six months has been remarkable— many of the books I’ve read to him over the years he now can read to me. When I believe he can handle the challenge, I up the difficulty level and now he’s reading to me poems from Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic. It’s not easy and we suffer through fits, false starts, and frustrations, but both of us are learning persistence and patience. Learning to read is a Sisyphean task when what was easy yesterday can be difficult today. It’s not easy and takes a lot of work from both of us. I’m a lifetime reader with a wealth of books that I’d like to pass onto my son for inspiration and wisdom, so every day he improves in puzzling out syllables into words is one day closer for that love of reading to be realized for the next generation.
There is some very good news to share, including a collaboration between Tennbo and myself, so let’s get to it.
Tour Dogs Zine: As much as I love reading and writing, I’ve come to embrace visual language as something that is part of my everyday living. I came to photography comparatively late in life, only really finding my photographic vernacular in my early thirties. Perhaps this was meant to be, but I do wish I had started in my teens or at least my twenties, so as to better know how I saw the world in that time (and had photography been a part of my life back then, I certainly would have been more skilled at looking, noticing my environment, the soft magic of good light, an appreciation for small and subtle things).
It was in this vein of thought I gifted Tennbo a Fuji Instax camera for Christmas, 2020. Tennbo borrows my phone camera from time to time (at the zoo in Hokkaido he took 250 photographs with it), but I like that with the Instax camera he has to take care with the correct settings and compose the photograph with the ambition of getting the photograph right the first time. I like that each photograph he takes is a tangible object in his hand moments after composition, an artifact of his childhood if you will (he often gathers all the images the two of us have taken and shuffles them like cards and lays them out in different arrangements). In particular, Tennbo is intrigued by the camera’s double-exposure option. I’ve done quite a bit of experimentation with multiple-exposure darkroom prints and while sequencing images, these photographs particularly intrigued him. So it was when Tennbo received the camera, he schemed for interesting juxtapositions, often settling for himself or myself as one-half subject, resulting in fascinating and mysterious results.
I’m often encouraging him to experiment with the camera, bringing it on jaunts to the river or walks with the dog and Tennbo has slowly produced a rather impressive collection of photographs. Personally, I really found myself enjoying the camera too— it was quite a different method of working than my usual process of shooting film and printing in the darkroom. There’s a sort of amateur playfulness inherent to the camera. I loved taking pictures on my own, often of Tennbo, often double-exposed.
In the spring I was approached by Trey Derbes to collaborate on a zine together. He produces a remarkable line of zines called Tour Dogs, featuring really talented, often under-known artists, sometimes from the street photography scene, but visualists from other milieus as well. I was thrilled to be invited by Trey and wanted to make a story with him that wasn’t connected to prior projects and when he suggested we use my Instax pictures, I pitched Trey that the zine might be most interesting as a father-son collaboration. Interestingly, it’s not very straightforward differentiating which photographs included are mine and which are Tennbo’s— I was fascinated in blurring the lines between professional and amateur, adult and child: not to show that photography is so simple that a child could do it well (making a beautiful photograph is really hard in fact), but that a child was capable of making beautiful images due to his unique way of seeing. So as you go through the zine, Tennbo’s photographs are mixed in with mine, and not until the end will you know whose is whose when you consult the index.
We had several months to make the zine and in that time I encouraged him to take more photographs so as to make the best possible object. I did much of the layout but consulted him often so that he would feel a part of the process. Tennbo did all the cover art and titles for the zine. Needless to say, he’s quite excited about our collaboration and can’t wait to show his school chums. He’s proud of our team efforts and I’m very glad for the confidence it will give him in his evolving artistic development.
Our zine, House of Tennbo, will come out in mid-October. Mostly likely I will mention it in the next newsletter in about six weeks’ time. Hope you might pick it up (as well as any other issues made by Trey that provoke your curiosity).
New website: For the last few years, many artists have been treating Instagram as something like a website, posting their new work and project excerpts, as social media, for better or worse, is where people are most likely to see it. With some reservations, I too took up this practice, particularly for book and show news. I’ve had a personal website for ten years that I updated only very rarely, because a good friend was doing the manual work for me since I’d never bothered to learn HTML. This was a flawed practice however, as it would be only a little bit of time before website remodelings became dated, as I came up with new project titles or reprinted an image into something more vivid or striking (rendering the print featured on my personal website a flawed example where my abilities were six months past).
So early this summer I finally immersed myself in Squarespace so I could take control of my website. It took some time, trial-and-error, a bit of a learning curve, but I got the hang of it and was able to make something that showcased my work well (while extolling the ease of Squarespace’s interface, a friend of mine said, “You sound like of one of those guys on podcasts”). Anyway, while I do believe that websites should be somewhat fluid, evolving with an artist’s production more frequently than every three years (three years seemed to have been my own personal interval time between revamping), I like that a website is like a bit of personal real estate. You’re working with templates, but you did it your way, so it has a bit more personal feel than social media sites. It’s all yours, your own little planet in this vast online universe.
I’m usually quite secretive about projects that are works-in-progress, not showing much of anything until they’re ready for book form or an exhibition. However, I decided to showcase some of my projects that I have not shown anywhere. A website is something like an aspiration; its purpose is to show you at your very best.
If you visit you can see what I have been working on the past three years as well as read more about the four books I have already published. Why not have a visit now?
Podcast: Recently, I was invited by Grant Scott of United Nations of Photography to record a five-minute audio answering the question, "What does photography mean to me?" It was actually not an easy question to answer and I had numerous false starts delving what my genuine feelings were. Needless to say, it was worthwhile reflecting on such an important sentiment and I'm grateful to Grant for that opportunity. If you’re curious what my answer was you can listen here (you'll hear my voice around the 8-minute mark of the show).
Sniper Reviews: There have been some more reviews of my book, The Sniper Paused So He Could Wipe His Brow. I’m pleased to share that writing for Photobook Journal, Rudy Vega says of the project: “an ingenious vehicle of a photobook-and-art object if you will, that gives those who vest themselves in journeying into a veritable looking glass of photography to its surrealist roots.”
And in Collector Daily, Blake Andrews writes:
“Old pictures blur and interweave with memories, which are in turn shaken and modified by Lotman’s toy camera. The resulting stew is amorphous and a challenge to untangle, resulting in a decidedly surreal book. But even if it operates by dream logic—or perhaps because of that fact—Sniper is a faithful recording of past journeys.”
I really enjoyed both reviews, as both readers interpret different elements of the book. I was also overjoyed when an American acquaintance in Japan received his copy and tweeted that Sniper has “layers upon layers, literally and figuratively. It’s probably the best visual representation of the mystical I’ve seen.”
I really am proud of the photo book and believe you will have strong feelings about it as well, as it rewards multiple viewings and a spiritual curiosity. And it’s quite affordable considering the book’s design ambitions. Copies remain available at IBASHO and The M Editions.
Sunlanders in PEN Magazine: Recently, my first photo book Sunlanders was featured in PEN Magazine. If you’re keen to learn more about how that book came about and the ideas I had in formulating the project’s ideas, you can read more about it here.
Group Show at IBASHO: I have four prints hanging at IBASHO Gallery for their summer show “Toshi- The City.” There are a number of great artists in the exhibition and it’s a great opportunity to see some vintage prints including those from William Klein and Ed van der Elksen (who is a major inspiration for me). The show is running another ten days so if you find yourself anywhere near Antwerp you might want to pay a visit.
Lately Reading: The news has such a strong pull— we’re living in historic times and it’s hard not to get sucked in. But it’s not quite possible to make sense of it all and there’s only so much one can worry or concern oneself before frustration sets in. Fortunately, I’ve found enough discipline to spend most mornings reading books. I’ve had a good run of novels. Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star really captivated me. It’s basically an apocalyptic story about a sudden emergence of a bright star in the sky. The story has multiple characters going through their own ordeals and personal crises, the star a sort of background symbol of their own dread and bad vibes, while strange occurrences reveal an Earth out-of-balance. The novel also has one of the most interesting depictions of death I have ever read. I’m currently reading Knausgaard’s first novel, A Time for Everything, which is long novel about angels and biblical scenes, reimagining, for example, a deep dive into the emotional lives of Cain and Abel. Knausgaard is most famous for his autobiographical fiction in his My Struggle series (I’ve read the first two of six books—they’re great), but I really like his novels best. If you haven’t read him yet, you must.
Also I finally read Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. The book received so much hoopla when it came out twenty years ago that I’d ignored it. But a friend said I had to read it and I was blown away. Experimentally composed, it tells a history of a radical, obscure poetry scene from Mexico City in the middle 1970s (called “visceral realism”), focused in particular on two poets, Ulysses Lima and Arturo Belano (a not-very-cryptic reference to Bolaño himself). It has a sort of Rashomon-type structure with multiple characters, different voices, many of them quite peripheral to the movement, but briefly or genuinely touching upon the main characters’ lives over a twenty-years’ period. There is also a road trip to find a mythical poetess who founded visceral realism in the 1920s, a woman who completely vanished, and it is her that Belano, Lima, and a 17-year-old narrator are searching for in the deserts of Sonora in a beat-up Impala on the run from a violent pimp. That Bolaño uses a thinly-veiled altar ego and the fact that many of the poets were based on friends causes one to wonder how much really happened, if the book was a collection of embellished facts or completely made up (much like the mystery Knausgaard employs in his My Struggle novels). It’s a sort of mythologizing in which both everything and nothing is real, reminding me a bit of Legs McNeil’s wonderful compilation of the New York punk scene from the 1970s Please Kill Me, which is a non-fiction book, but can we take the musicians, addicts, hanger-ons, and ne-er-do-wells at their word? With all their faulty recollections and bad grudges? There really is no “truth,” there is only anecdotal memory which might approximate but is never exact. Life is not just narrative, but also a kind of mood, and it’s important when literature reminds us this. But The Savage Detectives is also about aging, the passage of time, lost innocence, and failure. I couldn’t help reflecting on my own life, the fiery way I brandished my literary integrity in my twenties (how embarrassing I must have been sometimes!), how those dreams never really came to be, and with travel, adventure, and love I evolved into someone else. Life is a wild ride, is it not?