Before I knew about the trip to Tokyo, I had purchased a camera. So as soon as I knew I was going, I decided to develop my photography skills and my potential to create work through photography. Although I had not been given the assignment as yet, I was due to get this during February and this would be a truly long project. I began planning ahead looking at the use of the camera in a professional way using Aperture Shutter Speed and ISO printing off the guides to help me on the way as initially I did not understand. However, with persistence, I began to understand that with the use of those three elements it is about balancing. Although I had a plan, I decided to shift from one or the other, iso shutter speed and aperture. Sometimes I got this wrong but I was able to learn with the information coming up on the screen.
Photographers I looked at:
who is a photographer who is able to get into a space very close to a subject to be within a space and to not disturb the subject in a way that does not make them shy away or extenuate themselves. Still on the journey of learning, and what I was potentially wanted to do in Tokyo was to use photography to take the every day ordinary into the extraordinary. However, I was lacking confidence and found myself uncomfortable. I know that I have to become relaxed in my skin in order to go where I want to go with photography.
Vivan Maier is another artist/photographer who got close to her subjects, however, in the pursuit of photography, she kept her work to herself, hidden. It is interesting that she got close to her subjects but hid herself and her work was only highlighted when she died. From both these artists, I am taking that authentic non-staged energy and being still to take a photo within a space of a person.
Saul Leiter is another photographer I looked at in the pursuit of the ordinary within the extraordinary in photography, with an element of hidden, mystic, poeticism in his work. These photographers appeal to my quiet side. I thought about what I could do as my previous works had recordings with them. I thought of doing sounds of the city going to other cities such as Manchester, London, and Liverpool finding common ground and uniqueness, sampling in the UK creating from sound and picture. Would it be multi-layered as I prefer my work to be? I wanted to get close to the people, like the shots of the photographers I had been looking at Vivian and Helen. My skills had not developed much, although I had some knowledge of how to potentially approach photography manually and I simply was not feeling comfortable being in and around people using a camera as it made me feel intrusive. I continued taking my camera out to get over this feeling. I tried to keep a diary of some of my progress and kept a book with images of different types of photography, although I knew I wanted to do a certain type of photography.
I was aware that exploring different types of photography could benefit my work helping me to learn the camera techniques further. Taking my camera to Tokyo although still new, pushed me on as I used the camera every day moving from manual to autofocus. Before I set off, I began painting and responding to music with thoughts of my future project.
I thought this could be sensory, creating sound and responding to this is a place I am familiar with. I decided to develop and explore a project I did in my final project in my access course. This project, ‘Memory and Music’ looked at how music is deeply entwined in our memories, our lives, and human connections. However, I was still unsure of what I truly wanted to do. Although I knew that I wanted the experience of Tokyo to really give me some form of inspiration, a sense of direction and to bring forth something of interest.
The trip to Tokyo came, and I took in my surroundings from the fact that everyone looked so stylish to the traditional manner of people. I was struck by the love of old and new and how people politely bow and go about their days standing out without attention-seeking behaviour. However, moving into nightlife. In the bars, men paid for their drinks, whilst the women drank for free. Women were dancing on stage and some women drank in bars with their friends. Multiple men stood in bars some appearing alone, with one male who drank to fake confidence and attention seeking for a woman. I went to two places that night, one was a bar and the other was a nightclub.
Both spaces had women dancing on stage, resembling a time past in the UK it felt like stepping back into a world once known in the UK. Embracing the experience of being there through food, nightlife, and travelling via the underground, the traditional spaces with the shrines, the food, the streets, exhibitions, street fashion and culture. The overall temperament, the energy, the politeness, the tradition of bowing to one another, to sitting on the train politely, this way of being had me intrigued about the history, the culture, and the people of Tokyo and of Japan as a whole. What was making up the place that we know to be Tokyo? What were the layers that made up this place? I began to think about what is it that makes Tokyo and Japan. I started looking at the history and the development of the place.
The key things that came up were Zen Buddhism which was taken up by the Chinese in the 6th and 7th centuries along with wasabi and kintsugi.
I would like to explain why I was drawn to looking at the culture and the people’s way of being. This tends to be my main interest as I am interested in what makes humans, who we are, the human experience and what makes a place with people within it appear content with life. What is within their culture, ideas beliefs? To a place appearing so lost, ungrounded what are the pillars that have potentially fallen. Does the acceptance of everything come from a good place?
