Kawase Naomi

I really respect and love works of Japanese director Kawase Naomi. I saw her works in beginning of 2000 in Helsinki Ateneum. I was stunned to hear about her adoption (she was adopted when she was two, just like me). It could be because of this reason that I am so moved about her work.
My personal favorite is Mogari no Mori (Mourning Forest 2007) but I also love her earlier work Katatsumori and Embracing. She is fearless and honest documentarist.

Regarding Documentary

私は人間の内的なPowerを強く信じている。それは大きく、実に美しいPowerであり、しかも誰もが有している。これが私のドキュメンタリーを制作する理由だ。私は媒体として動画を用い、この不可視のPowerを可視化したいと望んでいるのだ。
これらのドキュメンタリーは、人々の生活に影響を与え、個人がより自然なライフスタイルを見い出すのにきっと役立つだろうと、心から信じている。
今から私はいくつかの短編動画を創るつもりだ。どうかVimeoで御覧ください。

Sony Nex :)

Friend borrowed me Sony Nex-7 with wide angle converter lens for shooting movies. I will be trying out the camera tomorrow. 🙂

Exile

Recently I have been very moved about Jinmo’s music, and it helped me to reach into those feelings deep inside myself. So I thought to record my face while listening his album “Eden”, and then those feelings just came. It’s so beautiful that it hurts. So then I thought maybe my face can convey that feeling.

Check out Exile in Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/69947887

I was adopted when I was two years old, and I had to say goodbye to my grandma and all of my biological relatives. Adoption means actually to adapt. You just have to accept it. That’s extremely hard for two years old boy.

But these days I actually feel I’m kind of embraced by the world. So my feeling has changed, but that’s only just recently.

Then, it was great to visit Whole Creation today after a long time and I had chance to record beautiful voice of Kagaya. I love you guys, you’re so cool! 🙂

Here is link to Jinmo’s album Eden.
Learn more about JINMO.

Gods of Earth and Heaven

Joel-Peter Witkin’s Gods of Earth and Heaven sent chills through my spine. Amazing, really honest piece of surreal photography that is also universal.

This appropriately named book might be shocking for some but for me I didn’t feel shock, just surprise. There’s nothing vulgar about it and nothing scandalous, but it’s more like surreal composition or strange documentary of humanity. The pictures really had smell to them, and then the bible-like cross on the cover is just wicked!

I was deeply surprised and impressed, not many photographs can do that to me nowadays. I must buy this book to study it further.

Facebook Profile Picture

facebookのプロフィール写真撮ります。
リラックスした、自然な表情の写真は任せてください。
スタジオでの撮影も、公園や森の中など屋外での撮影も大丈夫です。
東京・横浜エリアで受け付けています。

料金（税込）10,000円

I can shoot interesting Facebook profile photo of you, in environment which you prefer, such as forest, indoors or in studio. In my photo, people have natural, relaxed look.  I am available to work in Tokyo / Yokohama area.

collage

The cost starts from 円10,000 (incl. tax.)

Please contact me.

Pain of Photography

I find Susan Sontag’s words healing in some strange way, in this chapter she writes about photos of Arbus,

“According to Reich, the masochist’s taste for pain does not spring from a love of pain but from the hope of procuring, by means of pain, a strong sensation; those handicapped by emotional or sensory analgesia only prefer pain to not feeling anything at all.”

It could be argued that photographers seek connection to the world through their photos, great photographers often have had some traumatic event in some point of their lives, after which they find it difficult to connect to the world same way as other people can normally. Ordinary days feel so alien to us..

Photographs may become a way for people to feel something, but it’s at the same time, looking photographs also anesthetize.

Photography can be a way of ultimate cure, entire lifestyle which is built on supporting and protecting the artist’s soul. And at the same time, moments recorded on photographic paper turn into dust, photos themselves fade and disappear, and people forget them. Life is fragile like a piece of paper, other side being death, it takes a faint breeze of dust to flip it around, unexposed image becomes exposed.

Yet, recorded evidence of life makes somehow everything seem less painful, even though actually it might worsen the pain itself in form of nostalgia.

NYIP Feedback

I am really glad to receive the feedback, particularly on this outdoor shade photo. It seems this portrait of beautiful Kayo made impact for the NYIP instructor. The instructor quoted Pulizer winning photographer,

“When you are taking pictures,  you just don’t want to take pictures what show the situation, you want to take pictures which show how it feels like to be there”

If I can be successful in showing audience the mood of the situation or my connection to the subject, then, taking photographs is the thing I want to do.