Friends,
I hope you’ve had some beautiful light in your life. I’m balancing hope with the realism of news headlines, trying to navigate a sane, safe passage through these turbulent times. Do make some time for yourself for solitary walks, home cooked meals, and a good novel you haven’t read in a long time. It’s important to put store in patterns that have a reassuring familiarity. I have some rather good news about my new book, Amoeba, which will be printed in Tokyo next month, and published shortly thereafter.
Before that I’d like to share an essay recently brought to my attention by my friend, Justin Sanders. Enclosed in a handwritten letter I received from him over the holidays was a printout of this piece in The New Yorker by Joshua Rothman (“What If You Could Do It All Over?”) regarding the contemplation of unlived lives. As quoted by Rothman, “One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but in the end having lived only one.” The essay is a study, from the particular to the general, of what it’s like to suffer the what-ifs of “coulda, woulda, shoulda.” It’s as simple as imagining what if you had gone to your second choice for college. Or if you had taken Job A instead of Job B. Roth writes:
“We have unlived lives for all sorts of reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events force our hand; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more so with time… Even as we regret who we haven’t become, we value who we are. We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened.”
For someone in my situation, such rumination is quite straightforward: what if I had never moved to Japan? Would I have made it as a writer in Los Angeles or had finally found the temerity to move to New York? Perhaps I would have succeeded, or maybe only partially so, in that I would have only managed to publish in small literary journals or sell scripts that no studio ever produces, enough for a modest living perhaps, but little or no artistic satisfaction. Or maybe I would have completely failed, given up for good, and gone in a completely different direction. But where?! Would I have found what’s right for me? It’s somewhat terrifying to consider the potential void I might have been sucked into. Without Japan, there is nowhere near as much traveling over the past 18 years, there is no darkroom photography, and there is certainly no Ariko and Tennbo. They cease to exist because that reality, the one I now cherish, would have been obliterated.
Had I never left Los Angeles, I would be ignorant of this wonderful life lost to me. And possibly a loving family and a kind of artistic satisfaction would have been my daydreamed fantasy had I nixed Japan and stayed in California (there had been many reasons to remain or return early on, especially as I had finally managed to secure literary representation within a week of my arrival in Japan!) Fortunately, I stuck it out in Tokyo and made a good life for myself so there is no painful yearning for what might have been. It’s important to feel confident in the lives we’ve constructed. We need to believe we are living our best because the alternative is to consider our ruined potential. Roth quotes Jean-Paul Sartre:
“A man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh…. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations, and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.”
I am now 45 years old. There are many things I cannot do and might never learn. Must I be embarrassed that I have never skied or cannot skillfully play any instruments? Should I feel disappointed that my young man’s fantasy of being a great novelist is no longer a plausible daydream? Or is worthwhile enough just to love literature and feel belonging in the company of readers who take books seriously?
Like everyone does from time to time, I occasionally speculate on what might have been or what would have happened if A led to B, becoming C and so on until I am a completely different person. But more as a matter of whimsy than as longing. Mostly I’m just grateful for being me, the singular me of this moment, that has evolved over four decades, for better or worse.
BOOK NEWS: There are obviously impactful choices we make that shape our lives, but then there are ones that, small at first, have enormous consequence. In early 2005, I received a group email from a friend named Jennifer, forwarding the news of a friend’s apartment to rent in March. At that point, after two years of residing in Tokyo, I was leaving for an eight-months trip to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe that would finish in New York City. At the time I was living in a shared room with an old girlfriend—we were no longer together but we were still close friends. There were no urgent reasons to move out of our living space, and my finger hovered briefly over the delete button. But a thought briefly flickered: I was unlikely to ever return to Japan for many years after leaving. Why not give myself a month to live on my own in a beautiful, comfortable flat for my last weeks living in this temporarily adopted country?
So I met the owners of the flat, paid them cash, and moved in. It was there in unlikely circumstances that I met Ariko, the woman with whom nearly sixteen years later I continue to share a life with as we raise a son together. But none of that was foretold on that winter day scanning over a group email, as I was much more consumed with the big trip I was organizing, and the absolute mystery of what rebooting my life in New York or elsewhere would entail.
I go into detail about this encounter that would change my life in my new photo book, Amoeba. I conceived the idea last summer. I wanted to make a book here in Japan that would be a gift to my son, a book that might encapsulate how his father and mother fell in love, and thus how his existence came into being.
I structured the photo book with two-page layouts, one of Ariko through the years, the other of self-portraits, either as reflections or as shadow captures, interspersed with our story, mostly the origins of that first year. Like other books photographers have made about their partners, one of the key elements of the narrative is aging, and while we’re far from old, anyone looking at these images will notice that time has changed both of us, especially following the great divide for all couples, that before & after of childlessness and parenthood. Nothing changes your life so much as having a kid.
Amoeba is something of a self-portrait. It’s about myself as much as it is about Ariko. It’s a love letter not only to my wife, but also to my son. It’s so important to know where we come from, the stories achieving nearly mythical proportions because of the ridiculous odds of two people— these two particular individuals— falling in love, building a life together, and then giving one to a child. These are stories that compose our existence. What I wanted to do was make a small book that not only celebrates the long road we’ve had but remind others of their own journey as husbands, wives, mothers, fathers. Whatever you did to become who you are to the partner you have, taking care of the child(ren) you’re rearing, is a remarkable miracle of your own making. Kind of like the essay on unlived lives reminding us to champion the one we’ve got— this being that the life you have is a remarkably complex series of accidents and intentions that have led you to this moment. My story is personal, of course, but I’m hoping to reach you and others on a universal level. Because that’s what a good self-portrait does.
Amoeba will be published in Tokyo by Neutral Colors (Katoh-san, the publisher, and his team published my last book Middle Life Notes). The book will contain 28 darkroom color images and a long essay in English and Japanese. It will be printed on a Risograph machine and every copy will be hand-stitched by the publishers and will include a handmade color darkroom print (by me) inset on the back cover, so that every book will have an intimate, handmade feel. They’re printing and stitching in mid-February to have it ready for an exhibition in Tokyo at the end of February. (I’m not sure I’ll be in Tokyo for the show— it entirely depends on the covid situation.) Because of the manual work involved in making the book, it will be slightly more expensive than Middle Life Notes, about ¥4200 -¥4500 (before shipping). Amoeba will be an edition of 300. I’ll have more information in the next newsletter (including pictures of the finished book itself, as well as some explanation on how I approached the editing and telling of so personal a story). But right now if you think you might want to buy a copy directly from me so that you might have a signed edition, please let me know (via seanlotman@gmail.com or via Instagram direct mail) as I will be ordering a quantity of books from the publisher directly, so would like to have a ballpark figure of how many books I’ll need to purchase.
Tales of the Print: To celebrate its fifth anniversary, my gallery in Antwerp, Ibasho, invited all its artists to submit a photograph of theirs representing the spirit of the gallery name (Ibasho 居場所 in Japanese means a place where you belong or can be yourself). The other day I received in the mail the collected photographs manifested as a stack of postcards. It’s a really nice idea, sort of like a group show exhibition catalog, but with postcards no one artist is given primacy over another. There are photos of moments, still life, landscapes, abstracts, surrealism. My first instinct handling the cards was to look at each photograph one by one in case they were sequenced in a specific order. But later I found that spreading them across the table made each individual photograph’s impact that much greater. Like the whole is greater than its parts. I’m both grateful and humbled for the company I keep.
So my contribution was a photograph taken not in Japan, but in Costa Rica nearly nine years ago on the beaches of Puerto Viejo when we honeymooned there and Guatemala. Puerto Viejo was our only ‘lie on a golden beach and swim in azure seas’ moment. I could only laze by the sea for so long when there were so many beautiful colors and personalities encountered. Growing up and spending most of my life in cities, it’s not often I encounter wild horses and I had to hustle to get this image before the animals managed to gallop away.
At the time, I’d no idea that I had a problem with my Nikkor lens. Basically, when I was shooting f16, the aperture was not opening as much as it should, so very little light was reaching the film. Being bright and sunny with many layers of environmental details, I was often shooting with an f16 setting, so that when I made contact sheets, about half of them or more were quite under-exposed. This meant that printing them in the darkroom required using the strongest exposure light available for long periods of time, sometimes for fifty to ninety seconds! But I like how this came out and many of the prints from Costa Rica and Guatemala have this soft, blue, gritty hue.
But is this tropical paradise where I belong? Where I can be myself? This city fellow who prefers sneakers to sandals? Haha, I don’t know. Maybe that’s my subconscious telling me something…
A Book Well Loved: I was hoping to write about Hanayo’s wonderful photo book, Magma, published by akaaka in 2008, but it seems I have reached the “email length limit” (I tend to approach the newsletter composition in different segments, rather than a linear fashion.) While I could write a little bit about the book, I would not be able to post pictures. That’s no fun. So I’ll do so in the next newsletter.
LATELY READING: I was reminded recently of this wonderful ode to photo books written by Teju Cole about a year ago. Cole perfectly itemizes all the decisions, large and small, that go into the making of a photo book:
“What makes a photobook great is how well it combines a large number of variables: the paper; print quality; stitching and binding; the weight, colour and texture of the cover; the design and layout of the interior; the size and colour balance of the images; the decision to use gatefolds or to print across the gutter; the choice to include or exclude text and, if so, how much of it, where in the book, and in what font; the trim size and heft of the book; even the smell of the ink! Every great photobook is a granary of decisions, an invitation into the realm of the senses.”
Making Sunlanders and later Middle Life Notes and Amoeba were collaborative processes. Together, the publishers, the designers, and myself reviewed different possible book designs, colors, fabric textures, font, paper weight, and other calculations. A lot of thought goes into the production of photo books that will eventually make intuitive sense for the reader. There’s a real excitement, of both anxiety and anticipation, on the day of printing when all the many choices made— large and small— are finally being realized.
I’ve come to feel that photo books are similar to musical albums. They have rhythm, building in crescendo at times and climaxing near the end. They have a certain atmosphere, whether it be dramatic, tragic, intimate, playful, or confessionary. There are “hits” inside, photos that you return to again and again, perhaps not because they are beautiful, but because they are such an inspiring vision at how to potentially see the world. And ideally within the mood, there are stories told, so that like the best albums, there is a certain escapism to another world available. Teju Cole describes this pleasure so well:
But now you’re holding it, and what it promises is relief: the outside world falls away, the eye scans the image, you sense the paper on your fingertips, you feel the optical information spreading into your brain, you hear the sound of the turning page, you see the next image, you become aware of your own calm breath.
It took only a few long reading sessions to finish Berenice Abbott’s Selected Writings. More than half of the book is taken up with technical advice for the aspiring amateur photographer of the 1940s (much of it obviously outdated due to more than seventy years of technological advancement, but some of it, like how to spark spontaneity in a subject for portraiture, still apt). A marvelous essay finishes the book, The World of Atget, which, ostensibly about Eugene Atget— the obsessive photographer of Paris in the early 20th Century— is one of the most timeless, truthful meditations on photography that I have ever, in fact, read.
Abbott, a young American living in Paris in the 1920s, was introduced to Atget’s work by Man Ray, and her reaction was “immediate and tremendous.” She soon befriended him, bought some of his prints, and took his portrait. Going to his studio to give him the prints she made of that sitting, she learned of his sudden death. A correspondence then began between Atget’s best friend and Abbott, and this friend, trusting in Abbott’s earnestness and passion, bestowed upon her Atget’s collection of prints and negatives, the young American woman then becoming the curator of the man’s work and his legend.
She did her due diligence, as Atget today is remembered as one of the great photographers of the early 20th century. But in his lifetime, Atget was essentially a starving artist, peddling his prints for a few francs here and there to clients appreciative of the labor he had undertaken to record Paris as it was and how it might never be again. An orphan raised by an uncle in Bordeaux, Atget spent his 20s as a seaman traveling the world’s oceans and when he moved to Paris in his 30s he worked as a character actor in the theater. So he did not become a photographer until he was 42 years old after considerable life experience. He would spend the rest of his life compulsively photographing Paris, tramping parks, boulevards, side alleys and gutters, an old man with a big box camera. There was yet no glory in photography, which was considered beneath the arts, more like a mechanical craft. But none of this deterred Atget’s determination to tirelessly photograph Paris.
“Acclaim is, after all, not the essential reward. The act of creating has its own reward, and it is primary. When one embarks on an uncertain venture, silence is often an ally. Anonymity becomes an asset, if not a necessity.”
Nowadays, the young photographer is distracted and discouraged when some kind of recognition—whether it be from The Establishment or social media— is denied them. And while winning awards as a young artist is initially great for one’s confidence, the pressure to follow up with equally or superior meaningful work for a large audience can compromise an artist’s choices. Just because photographers have a smaller audience than say, musicians, actors, or novelists, doesn’t mean failure is any easier, because it will be mostly your peers watching.
Abbott writes, “Photography requires an inordinate amount of hard physical work, even drudgery.” There is this very common misperception that photography is as simple as pressing a button, and is thus the most egalitarian of all the arts, because, hey! anyone can do that. Again, Abbott, makes the case for the hidden complexity of the art form:
“Not only does focusing become an act of decision depending on action, depth of field, light intensity, to mention only a few factors involved, but it can also become a subtle conscious creative act. Before that, the photographer has another important decision to make: that one best spot to place his camera. What must the perspective be? That question alone requires a number of decisions, with final careful adjustments. Every step in the process of making a photograph is preceded by a conscious decision which depends on the man in back of the camera and the qualities that go to make up that man, his taste, to say nothing of his philosophy.”
It takes a significant amount of effort to create a personal aesthetic, imagination to see patterns and directions in one’s work, and self-criticism to know when one is on the right path or wasting one’s time with something obvious, corny, or hackneyed. Some are gifted early in seeing, but for most of us, it’s hard work to get to the place where we can visualize what others around us cannot. Abbott: “I believe the photographer’s eye develops to a more intense awareness than other people’s, as a dancer develops his muscles and limbs, and a musician his ear.” I can say for myself, that even when I do not have a camera or am in the process of taking photographs, I have a much stronger affinity and appreciation for light than I did as a young man. Often, reflecting back on past journeys, travels, and escapades, I can picture the light clearly, because it was stored in my memory and now I can lay it out in a daydream and be dazzled what I’d seen with all the more gratitude.
Finally, Abbott sums up perfectly what it takes as an artist to produce meaningful work, and that it is a collaborative interplay of the spirit and mind:
“The approach of a photographer to his subject is the result of his qualities and experience as a man. If he is sound and healthy he uses his mind, his imagination and his emotion. If he approaches his work with intellect alone, the result can be cold and curiously inhuman. If his approach is with heart alone, the result may be tiresome and sentimental. It is a combination of these forces that adds up to understanding and maturity for a photographer so that he may recreate his subject and bring to it new life.”
Some young people are born with this deep reservoir of self-awareness and empathy. They can instinctively transmit what it is like to be alive, telling stories with images that emotionally resonate or visually intrigue without being clinical or maudlin. But for most us, including myself, it takes a lot of living and plenty of failing to get to a point where we know who we are, to take the serenity prayer to heart, and make something meaningful of a life long lived. It can be the record of a city as it once was and never will be again, or it can be about you, the way you’ll never be again.
Nothing like all the failed photographs you make in your life to ground you with a strong, brave spirit. Persistence is the thing. And optimism that the light will be good again tomorrow or the next day. So long as we have sneakers and sunlight, we are never done.
This is the life we’re living. One step at a time, into the light.