Friends,
There is much to share, as this year is passing fast and full, with trips to Kuwait and Tokyo for showing my work. Things are slowing down now and I’m enjoying cooking and throwing the baseball with Tennbo, back and forth, for hours at a time, the light slowly changing, my son’s accuracy and arm improving. I’m often thinking about what makes me happy, and it’s often enough to walk my dog, sprint-catch for that occasional errant throw, watch old films and reread great literature. That’s the foundation that gives me the strength to keep going, making photographs and trying to discern a narrative in the work that hopefully makes life a little bit more beautiful.
The Leaves on the Trees Go Whooosh: In the autumn of 2023 I was invited by Toto Tvalavadze and Lorenzo Menghi of Jinny Gallery to show at their flâneurish Jinny Gallery. Jinny Gallery does not contain an interior space in the traditional sense— rather, it is a walk where one can view photographs in decommissioned light booths scattered over a half-dozen blocks in Tokyo’s pleasant Jingumae neighborhood. I wanted to show new work that would complement the atmosphere and conception of the gallery. Lately I have been photographing trees— I walk a lot, especially in the mornings with my dog in the Imperial Palace grounds, and have lately begun appreciating their physical and emotional character. Their strange, subtle beauty has always been self-evident, but only recently have I become aware of their photogenic qualities. Now I’m consciously looking out for trees to photograph and have enjoyed looking back through my contact sheets for arboreal images to print.
I decided to show 34 images. For the presentation I gathered up several large bags of leaves from the Imperial Palace, where I walk nearly every day. Along with evergreen and coniferous leaves, I brought with me gingko and maples, pine cones, and finally sticks, which I used to hang the pictures. It was fun experimenting the presentation of artwork in a nonconventional, playful fashion. I’m also quite curious to see what nearly four weeks of exposure to the elements will do to the prints.
One of the reasons I wanted to do the show is because the Jingumae neighborhood is very near Gaienmae Station, where a huge redevelopment plan of the locale will experientially affect a lane of beloved gingko trees, and where hundreds of other trees may be destroyed if the plan goes through. Some in the neighborhood welcome the investment, while many see the plan as foolish, unnecessary, and toxic for the environment. The city’s citizens are trying hard to block the construction plans and if you have a moment you can sign a petition to save the trees here.
My artist statement for the show where you can find more information is on the website for Jinny Gallery. The Leaves on the Trees Go Whooosh! will run through the end of the month, March 31st.
Tennbo tagged along for the trip to Tokyo and helped me install the show, decorating some of the booths. We had a great time in the city, his first visit since he was three years old and which he no longer remembers. It was pretty eventful for us, beyond installing the show and doing an artist walk, we saw some friends, visited the Museum of Photography in Ebisu and the More Arts Museum. Highlights for him were TeamLab Planets and Disney Sea, but it was important for me to show my son where his mother and I lived for five years a long time ago and to take him to the Lion Cafe, which plays classical music at a loud volume and where you aren’t allowed to talk (people come to do work, kill time, and nap). Though it’s been around nearly a century, surviving the Tokyo firebombing of 1945, there is a possibility the Lion Cafe will be destroyed in yet another redevelopment and gentrification plan for the Dogenzaka neighborhood. What bombs cannot render into oblivion, bureaucrats can. There is nowhere in the world quite like this respite from a busy and distracted world and I hope I can take Tennbo there again someday.
Speculative Horizons: In January, I traveled to Kuwait where eight of my images from my project Spaceman Lost Your Way were being shown in a beautiful space in Kuwait City’s downtown district. The show’s theme, Evasive Sanctuaries, “explores physical and psychological spaces that have complex and multilayered significance, that are both remembered and imagined.” I’d missed the opening gathering, but was there with my close friend Saad Alsharrah (also showing his work, a biographical story on a Japanese-Australian pearl diver) and the show’s curators Kristian Haggblom and Stephanie Rose Wood. For me, the highlight was touring the exhibition with a group of High School students— it was interesting not only explaining how work was made in the darkroom, but how film operates in a camera. I’m hoping that exposure to my project, as well as Saad’s and that of Hajime Kumura’s and Moe Suzuki’s work (also being exhibited with their provocative contemplations on memory loss and neighborhood history), might have inspired these young minds into considering life more slowly and critically and might veer away from something conventional into a life altogether strange and unknown. That’s where some of the meaning in making art comes from.
While in Kuwait, I also led two workshops, one on storytelling and visual idea generation, another on black and white photo printing at Khemiae Darkroom in the city center. Both were small but fulfilling activities. It was especially wonderful for me to do the lesson on alternative darkroom practices. I’d actually never printed in a black-and-white darkroom before, but was confident I could learn how to do it naturally, having spent the better part of my artistic work-life the past 11 years experimenting in a color darkroom. I brought with me the only two B&W negative sheets I had, one from Zanzibar, 2005, the other Kyoto, 2011. It took about 30 minutes to learn the process, but my methods printing color were easily transferrable to monochrome and once I got the gist of it, I just wanted to stay inside all day and print!
One of the young men who did both classes, Aziz Alrabea, has a fascinating curiosity and project contemplations. Aziz brought in a sheet of negatives he’d bought in a market that had images from Mosul, Iraq, 1978. That was the year before Saddam Hussein took power, which means, the last year that Iraq was essentially at peace and stable (two years later the war with Iran started, then the first Gulf War, then sanctions, then Bush’s invasion, civil war, and chaos still unresolved today). I taught Aziz how to bring out the photograph by trying different burn-and-dodge techniques, taking a bold heck-with-it-all approach and we had a great time trying to bring back these ghosts to life.
Three weeks in the Middle East: While in the region I decided to make an adventure of it and stayed three weeks, visiting the Emirates and Oman as well. I really loved Kuwait, though a big reason was the hospitality of my friend, Saad. He had been the main point man, instrumental in organizing the show, securing the venues and financing, recruiting enthusiastic young artists to help, and setting up the artwork in the gallery space. I stayed at his place and we talked, shared, contemplated— we ate a lot of good food and drove around the city. Probably because of the invasion more than 30 years ago, Kuwait is overlooked by tourists. Admittedly it doesn’t have an infrastructure built for travelers— there is no rail system and from what I gathered the bus system was inadequate. Driving is intense, with every man for himself on the road. You need wheels to get anywhere. (The light reminded me of the skies of my 1980s childhood in Los Angeles.) This being the case there were no independent travelers or even tour groups. Kuwait felt uniquely exotic, which was wonderful.
The Emirates wan’t quite as worthwhile. The cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are well-constructed, clean, and photogenic. The bus network in Abu Dhabi and the train line in Dubai were easy to figure out so I was able to see a lot of both places without the need for taxis or private car. But the wealth was so ostentatious and the culture so materialistic I was rather discouraged. It also felt that the experiences were highly curated in the sense that we were receiving an in-country experience chosen for us by the kingdom. I encountered few Emiratis. Nearly everyone I met was from India, Pakistan, or Nepal (which meant a lot of Indian meals, a small good thing). I was there in February when the weather is temperate— can’t imagine the challenge for the expats from poorer countries constructing the city in 50+ degree temperatures. Emirates was pleasant to visit, but if you’re sensitive to the discrepancy in privilege, a visit here can be both infuriating and disheartening.
I’d long wanted to visit Oman. It had always seemed so remote and faraway. I’d never met any Omanis nor known anyone who’d been there, so I’d built up a considerable romantic idea of the place. Imagine my surprise then, when I arrived by bus at Muscat’s famous waterside corniche and there were two large cruise ships docked nearby! I’d seen a number of tourists in the UAE (interestingly the majority of them from authoritarian regimes, especially Chinese and Russian) and was hoping to recover that feeling of faraway lostness that I’d had in Kuwait. It wasn’t hard. The majority of the Westerners were day-trippers stepping off the boat for a few hours. Muscat is a rather sprawling city, large enough to escape what is again the state’s presentation-of-self for the short-term visitor, into a more authentic, local experience. This has always been important to me and the older I get, all the more valuable.
I’m old enough that I did a good deal of travel before smartphones, social media, and bargain-priced airfare, traveling when and where there were few crowds and one could really feel like you were very far away from it all. When I’m traveling, especially with the intent to photograph, I’m questing for those out-of-time landscapes because they are beautiful and real, but I realize also that this feeling connects me to the experiences I had in my 20s and early 30s, and now nearing 50, the nostalgia not just for how the world once was, but also a youth that is more past than present, is fleetingly there, felt and cherished and when vanished again, once more longed for.
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs: Since being tipped off about this project by my friend Trane DeVore, I can’t stop sharing with friends my enthusiasm for A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs because it’s so thoroughly researched and engaging regarding stories on the greatest music of the 20th century. The project’s British author, Andrew Hickey, has been doing it for about six years and is only around 170 songs in. This is because some of the song stories run about 30,000 words and the average episode runs about two and a half hours.
In an article about Hickey and his project in the New Yorker, Hickey’s efforts are compared to something akin to the construction of the Oxford Dictionary, the sheer breadth of the undertaking being so remarkable. The first episode I listened to, “Hey Jude,” was more than three hours long, which is not just about Paul comforting Cynthia and Julian Lennon after John’s leaving his family, but also their sojourn with the Maharishi, John’s courtship of Yoko, the recording of the White Album, the revolutions of ‘68, and so much more. Hickey gets into session players, composition, high-tech engineering jargon, but also the social, political, and economic forces affecting the musical landscape. Standout episodes are the ones on the tragedy of Otis Redding (“Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”) and the Velvet Underground and its origins not just in Pop Art, but also minimalist composition (“White Light White Heat”). Probably most fascinating is Hickey’s convincing argument that despite having 1/1000th the reach of the Beatles, the Grateful Dead have been more influential in the world we live in today, not only because of its connection to Silicon Valley, but also for establishing the template in which artists or bands give out free samples—bootleg tapes in the case of the Dead— surviving artistically due to the support of hardcore fans (“Dark Star”).
Throughout the listening of different episodes, bands, artists, songwriters, sub-genres, folks come and go, depart and return. Influences are inspired, borrowed, or stolen. There is an interconnectedness between it all, probably because in the West most of the popular music of the 50s and 60s came from just five cities (London, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, and San Francisco). There are villains, goons, and unsung heroes. Hickey is a sleuth for gathering detail and has strong narrative chops. I’m sure many reading this surely scoff at even considering a 2 1/2 hour episode on Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” but if you do, it’ll almost certainly leave you emotionally raw and delightfully afire. You have to hand it to someone who puts so much of his life force into something this ambitiously grand. If you delve and the gold is great, keep digging. This is a wonderful, quixotic thing being made.
I’m going through the podcast too! It’s an incredible series