autumn tactics

「この視点から」開催後約三週間です。写真はいっぱいプリントされていますが、統一感が全体的に足りないので、今週末カラープリントを加えてパターンを洗い出します。人物のクローズアップとワイドショットのコンビになる気がします。

皆さん楽しみしてください。

The greatest passion is the unthinking. There is no doubt, no questioning, no measurement of the fervor. An unseen force grips the heart and spurs the body into action. I am consumed of late by a subtle form of madness. I come home from the office as always around ten and immediately set to work. Scanning film, adjusting levels, printing proofs, tweaking text. I scour the internet for resources on technique, reference media, and self-promotion. The whirlwind around my fingers does not stop until well past three in the morning, when I collapse in a pile upon the last vacant spot in my upturned room.

For two weeks I have continued like this, my every idle second spent on combing the deep recesses of my mind for forgotten tasks.

So buried in photography have I become that I can’t even remember actively what I’m doing.

Exhausted. After one more darkroom marathon session and class I must crash…

来月また個展を行います。タイトルは「この視点から」です。今回は七月と違って、写真専門ギャラリーで開催します。そしてモノクロプリントは自分で手焼きします。今こそ予定表に見物予約を入れましょう。

11月29日-12月5日＠PLACE M新宿御苑前
毎日開館12:00-19:00

「この視点から」について

どのような経緯で今の僕になったか。今の自分は、どれくらい生まれた瞬間に決まってた？
友達の 輝きと、歩んできた道の土からどれくらい色を吸収したの？

米国で青年期を育み、日本で成人になった。
今年の年末に、これまでに見たことや経験したことを振り返ってみると、どのような変化ががあったのか…
影と光、 真冬の寒さと恋人の胸の温もり。すべての響きと刺激、言葉と感情、それらは生き方と愛し方を教えてくれた。
そして、その経験を全部目を通して知った。目であなたの笑いと涙を見た。そして、お互いがどんなに大切な存在であるかという深い絆を知った。 これは僕らに対する僕らの感情と共に経験した場所の記録だ。
お蔭様で、みなさんと一緒に成長できる喜びをうれしく思い、感謝の気持ちがますます深まった。

Gentenkaiki 12 photos are up.

今はスキャンと整理中の写真はちょっとキャパオーバーしてるから、なかなか仕上がらないけど、原点回帰の写真は恐らく水曜日にアップロードします。

Working through Gentenkaiki film, two rolls of Centuria left to scan… so very tired, and going to be in the darkroom until midnight tomorrow… exhausted much?

Riding on a zephyr, under the full moon, my star is rising.

Some kind of pain, some kind of joy. Look at the heaven and let a bit of yourself go free.

こころがとける。あ~ぁ、参った！かわいい。

来月はまた個展を開催します。今回は手焼きプリントの写真が初めて登場されます。そして写真専門ギャラリーです。テーマは今度詳しく説明しますけど、大まかに過去の四年間を振り返えってみます。

特に今年の成長ではそれが中心としています。色んな人と話せて、自分はなぜこの人になったか。友達のお陰でここまで来られました。クリスマス、年末の直前ですから、ちょうどいい課題と思います。かなりプライベートですけど、その気持ちを公開します。

アーティストとしてだけじゃなくて、自分としてこれをやると健康的と感じています。解毒の一種かな。

I woke up again inexplicably at five a.m., and deeming it too early went back to bed. I missed the sweet spot around seven-thirty and woke up at nine, but I had a dream that had me whistling on the way to work.

I wore my pink and grey striped three-quarter sleeve under my reversible vintage down vest, blue nylon-side out. It felt _fantastic_.

I left the work of multi-threaded allocators at nine and swung by Yodobashi on the way home to undo the damage I’d done the night before. I returned the Fuji Rembrandt fibre stock for some Ilford RC pearl coat. It’s not quite as vibrant and textured as the Gekko stock I used for the Enoshima show but it should be more in my range for darkroom experience.

I’ve torn a couple drawers apart exposing the complete lack of organization the last three years’ film stock has been subjected to, but it needed to happen sooner or later. Going to the darkroom tomorrow has just given me the kick I needed to get down to brass tacks. Saturday I’ll probably pick up a couple more Hakuba albums and get it all in order at once, chronologically and labelled as God and Phillip Greenspun intended.

Anyway now I have my material sorted and about thirteen shots or so to try out with the new medium tomorrow. And then on Saturday evening I’m off to hit up Gentenkaiki for a long, hippie rave of a three-day weekend.

日記を最近みたら、人物の写真が多いと感じてるかもしれない。そう。そうですね。残念ながら去年と今年はデザインフェスタに展示した時代よりあまり写真を撮っていない。しかも、コマ数的に今年は恐らく新記録です。七月の江ノ島個展のため14本で、来月のギャラリー個展には既に17本を越えています。要するに被写体のバラエティーが少ないからもしかしてあなたが飽きているかもしれない。すまん。

しかも個展向きで、一貫性が強いの写真展を精一杯撮っています。自分も微妙に飽きっちゃいそうほどですけど、ビジョンを強化しつつ、表現したいことを絞っています。

今回の一番難しいのは技術の課題かもしれません。モノクロ写真は自分で手焼きします。久しぶりの暗室セッションは金曜日ですので、今日帰り道で紙を買いました。GA…ギリギリ閉店だったので、急いで間違えてバライタ印画紙を買ってしまった。それで明日こういう風に進むか、返品してRCを買いなおす。困ったなぁ。(_　_~)；

Autumn always seems like a time to reboot. The heat goes away, so doing things, simple things, isn’t laborious. Autumn has a lot of anticipation, too, so that adds a little fuel to the fire. I think part of it is programming from all those formative years where autumn meant new grade, new classes, school supplies, activities, aspirations, dreams. “This year it’s going to be different, I’m going to join all these clubs, make a million friends, be the top of my class and get Mary Jane Perfect to go with me to homecoming.”

But you can’t escape the drama. The drama follows you around basically forever until… well… if you’ve been talking to me a lot lately you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This weekend I.am.out. For better or worse, I’m going to Gentenkaiki with the two Satomis. This is a 3-day affair so I am going to pack to-the-teeth. There will be moving water, grass, quiet, Buddhism, noise, dancing, alcohol, ?1?#$, and undoubtedly drama.

But that’s my life in autumn. Drama.

Who are you? Is it your parents’ love? Your friends’ influence? Something you saw on television? What the girl on the street told you to be? Maybe all of it. You have no choice really, existing is experience, and the all the mind does is absorb and make it your own.

There’s something inside of all this, like an uncarved doll in a supple piece of wood. The question is will my conscious mind where the tools are kept listen to the wood?

I need to grow. But I am growing, or…

Plants grow, or they die. If they don’t receive the nutrition and care to sustain life, they die. But if they do, they grow. How they grow depends on a number of factors, some of which may be attributable to chaos theory and randomization, but more or less if you give plants a certain kind of environment to grow in, they grow a certain kind of way.

So I eat food, sleep, and move about. Life is sustained so I grow. Do I grow well? That’s another issue.

I think I am growing differently these last few months, and I think this is a good thing. It’s painful, but I think it’s more honest and truthful. Honest to myself more than anything I suppose. I wish it would hurry along, bringing all of the love, peace, and fulfillment that my stirs in my heart. But maybe it won’t be, or maybe it will be, but not for weeks, months, or years. I just don’t know. There’s so much that doesn’t make sense now.

But when a tree is cut, and its trunk is bent another way, things will always be unbalanced at first. So that’s what I have to find, balance. But balance takes time. So for now I focus on my ideal, and I pray.