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Entries tagged as kyotoSaturday, September 13. 2008Kyoto Journal #70
Kyoto Journal is an English language publication coming out of Kyoto. To mark its 70th issue Kyoto Journal has looked locally at its birthplace; Kyoto. I showed the founding editor John Einarsen some of my previous work documenting city streets in Vancouver and he thought something like this might work in issue 70.
 The final eight page image before text was added. I was new to Kyoto at the time (this was last November) so I started to look for locations right away. I had little idea of what Kyoto was like beyond the tourist spots I've seen before. Kyoto is the city of temples; there is no mention of being the city of convenience stores or renovated cafés. I went out many times to either look or to photograph. Each week I told John "I'm almost finished, I just have to shoot one more building and stitch it in." Well, that week kept repeating. By April I had to attach a tripod holder to my scooter so I could get around. I went from hypothermia in the winter to heat-stroke in the summer but I was still shooting.  An early mock-up of the cover image for KJ. A few weeks before the magazine went to press John was still calm and patient with me. I kept promising to finish but John said, "I have a few more places I want to show you." He took me on a tour of some spots that don't have tour bus parking like Kurodani Temple (黒谷寺). By this point I was using a bicycle to get around more slowly and I found even more hidden locations. Well, sometime in July I finished the image. It includes images from November to July with over 70 layers of buildings and people. It isn't "straight" documentary where each snapshot would have be considered a separate image, it's edited like a film into a one coherent strip about 2 meters long. It wraps around from the back cover to the front and the first few pages in. Thursday, November 8. 2007Playroom. at MOMAK
On November 1st I photographed the installation of a work called Playroom. by ICHIHARA Hiroko and YANAI Shin-ichi. The photographed is published on the MOMAK (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) website in the news section.
The room the work was installed in completely changed once the elementary school students and high school students arrived. The piece was transformed from a static collection of objects into something spontaneous and carefree. These are not always the kind of reactions we want to have in an art gallery — or so it used to be, a group of people quietly contemplating a Rodin sculpture without more than a whisper. Children are not so distant from art. They enjoy jumping right into it. Playroom. is the kind of piece where you can see this transition because it was built for children and teens to interact with. Monday, October 29. 2007Kyoto Jidai Matsuri (Festival of the Ages)
Sanjo Bridge during the Kyoto Jidai Matsuri as the parade passes to its destination at Heian Shrine. More photos from the festival
１０月２２日、京都三大祭りの一つである「時代祭」を見に行った。明治から平安時代までの１１００年にのぼる時代の流れを２０００人の行列を通して再現していく。行列では時代の流れを感じさせてくれる様々な衣装や道具、また参列した人々の豊かな表情など、実際に会場でしか味わうことのできない雰囲気を楽しむことができた。 We went to see the Jidai Matsuri (Festival of the Eras) on Oct 22. This festival is the one of three big festivals in Kyoto and held annually. There is a total of around 2000 participants in the parade. Each group shows the style each era between Heian period about 1000 years ago, through to the Meiji era that ended just a hundred years ago. Wikipedia: Festival of the Ages Saturday, October 27. 2007Destination: Kyoto City
 Our Balcony, Facing South, Kyoto City.  Shelter, Uzumasa, Kyoto City.
Uzumasa is near Eiga Mura or Movie Town in Kyoto city. The neighbourhood can't be compared to Vancouver at all. While Vancouver was built in clear steps our neighbourhood in Kyoto is layer on layer of construction. The houses are packed together but not in even rows. The streets become suddenly narrow and house-fronts face different directions. But in Kyoto the tiny Jizo shrines keep their sacred spaces like bubbles from the past as trains, scooters and houses surround them. If Vancouver is well known for its modernist architecture, being predominantly built in the 1950s and 60s, Kyoto is more like a well packed suitcase holding the contents of over a thousand years in a modern city. Saturday, October 13. 2007The End of the Road
 At the landslide construction area. I decided to take a look at the progress of the landslide repair just past Kutsuki village (Takashima City) that seems to be under construction since at least last July. Kutsuki is in the mountains between Lake Biwa and Kyoto City. In fact, three cities and two prefectures meet up in one part at the edge of Kutsuki: Takashima City, Kyoto City and Otsu City. I think the landslide is just across the boundary in Otsu City. There are few ways to get to Kyoto from Kutsuki but there are also other roads that meander, growing mossier and mossier until they suddenly end as tiny one lane roads marked with crumbled cliff-faces and warning signs. It was one of these roads that I drove on on a rainy autumn day.  One of the roads coming from Kutsuki and ending somewhere north of Kyoto city.
 The mossy road that ended suddenly. The other part of the name "Disappearing Views of Takashima-City" I don't like is that these views aren't going to disappear as much as change. But that's nothing new or spectacular. What is really happening is that the younger generation is moving to the city to find more profitable work and live in greater convenience creating a vacuum in the rural areas. So in the end I need to start photographing the journey between the quiet towns and villages between Lake Biwa and Kyoto city. Now I just need to come up with a new name. "City Self, Country Self" is already taken by Rodney Graham. Sunday, September 9. 2007Disappearing Views of Takashima City 「消えゆく光景、高島市」シリーズ
 Disappearing Views… go to image gallery イメージギャラリーはこちらから This way you can enjoy the images almost like you are standing right in the gallery. The largest image in this series is a work in progress reaching 14 meters across but due to the difficulty of working with hundreds of files it will take me probably two years to fully complete the image. このシリーズのメイン写真のサイズは幅３５０cm。しかしブラウザーから 直接動かせるビューワで写真中の収穫者たちの顔表情までズームして見ることができる。 このブラウザーでの見方はまるでギャラリーの中であなたが鑑賞しているかのような楽しませてくれる。 このシリーズの中での一番大きな写真は幅１４mにのぼり、現在製作中。何百ものファイルを使っての作業のため、 完全に完成させるまでにはあと２年を要する予定である。
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