Group 7, Tama, Goes to Totem Pole Gallery

Shinya Arimoto's Portraits at Totem Pole Gallery

It was a mystic place. Totally new but simultaneously, it’s old. I have visited Totem Pole Gallery June 21, Tuesday. The gallery is located in the residential area. With a white faint light, it appeared. Its outside is glassed in and one is able to see inside of it. The first thing I felt about this gallery when I stepped in was that this gallery is something homey.  Twenty photos, shown in one room. The room is not so large but with its white painted wall, it makes the whole gallery look bright and clean. Also, it exaggerates the works well.

Shinya Arimoto is the photographer of all twenty.  All images displayed are selected from his past exhibitions. The gallery is run by him and other four photographers. They rotate their work exhibitions periodically. 

As I look through his art, I gradually am drawn into his photos. In every images, Arimoto uses single person and they all have some kind of personality that is little or much different than us. From these twenty works, particularly, two photographs have impressed me; a guy with dress that is made from Koinobori (carp-shaped steamer), and a woman who wears a mask which has a hole on it. What are they doing? Why they wear stuff like that? First time, I watched them with wondering and confusion. At the same time, I thought these people are crazy. A guy wears a dress like a woman? A mask with a hole? That’s abnormal. It was my first opinion.

But wait a second. They might have some idea. That something we don’t know.  A dress made from koinobori. Isn’t this saves nature? When koinobori gets old, we throw away. The guy in the photograph wears a koinobori dress walking through Tokyo. And the woman with a mask, she has a drink at her side. The mask has a hole at the place where her mouth is. With that mask, she can drink it without put off and put on the mask. It is true that they look abnormal but they are not crazy. They have an idea and actually it’s smart. As with these two images, most of the images that are displayed there were taken in Tokyo. Every day, I walk through Tokyo but I was oblivious of my surroundings. His photograph made me to realize that even if you don’t notice, there are so many people who are talented and cool. His art makes us know and notice new stuff in daily life.

All of his photographs are black and white. Why black and white? Arimoto says color photo sometime make back ground push into the main object too much. By making it white and black, viewers look the main object which artists want to show most. And it worked well. I first looked at a person in the photograph and after that, I looked behind of it. Totem Pole Gallery is small but inside of it there are the photos that are really interesting. Arimoto’s works made me think both when I was at the gallery and also, after I left there.

Shinya Arimoto was born in Osaka, Japan, 1971. After he graduated high school, he got into TV commercial film studio. At that time, he had been thinking that photograph is occupational stuff and no more than that. His recognition toward the photography has changed since he entered Visual Arts Osaka. As he studied photography, its mysteriousness and attractiveness gets deep and deeper, and it captivated him into the world of photography. Also, Masatoshi Naito’s photo album, “Tokyo” prompted him to take a step into field of photography. In 1994 he graduated Visual Arts Osaka. In 1998 he won 35^th Taiyo award. From 1994 through now on, his photography have been exhibited as a solo. Moreover, he also exhibits his art as a group.

In Shinya’s works, we often see the homeless in it, but he doesn’t intend to choose them. Also, he doesn’t inquire particular race, age or job. His theme is “brightness of primitive life that indeed exists in urban living.”  What he looking is a person who is prominent even if he/she is in the crowd. That means, he is looking for people who can’t categorize by his own experiments and knowledge that he have had.

Shinya mostly takes black and white photography because he loves it. Black-and-white photographs were the first photograph he had composed. He liked to work in the darkroom and it is fascinating to run all process by himself.  And primarily, when he think of his theme, color is not necessary in his art. Sometimes, when the photograph has a color, its background gets overabundant. Of course, background is necessary, but most important thing is an object. That is one of the reason he takes black and white. Besides going to neighbor convenience store, he always carries a camera everywhere he goes. Right now, he administrates the Totem Pole Gallery, exhibit his own arts there, lecturing at photograph school, and take a photograph that have requested. For the time other than that, he works on making photographs. He says that reading a book, listen to music, or going out for a walk, everything relates to the photograph so it’s not able to state from where to where is the time for working for the photography.

    He feels pleasure that he could give viewers the stuff he found is easy to miss and is really tiny and delicate. As the artist, he wants to create the photograph that could take over for the next gender. Also, he wants to more people to know about the fascination of photograph. Edward Weston found a perfect curve in the urinal form, and Alfred Stieglitz discovered the state which is the sky and oneself is equivalent. As it is said “The number of the art is the number of the artists”, he feels proud of finding out the new value in making a photograph.

From another Tama member:

Shinya Arimoto is a rising Japanese photographer. After he graduated from the Visual Arts College in Osaka, he moved to Tokyo. At first, he had certain difficulties with the distant mentality of the people in Tokyo, but after a while he got used to it. “Now”, he told us in an interview, “I really like them a lot”. He specializes in black and white portraits of random individuals. For him, there is nothing more interesting than the exceptional charisma of extraordinary ordinary people. His photographs are mostly snapshots with contradictory, moody, and dark consistency, reminiscent of the most haunting and forlorn moments in life. Sorrow-speaking eyes are common features of most of the photographs. By looking at those eyes, the verdant, average viewer gets pushed into the deepest abyss of his or her soul, where exasperation and irredeemability grow to an unusual degree.

The first reason why he decided to specialize in black and white photography was because he wanted to eliminate all unnecessary stimuli caused by color. The second reason was the unique atmosphere of black and white photographs. As the result, the viewer can focus on deeper expressions instead of the multicolored surface, and sinks into the scenery to experience it completely.

Although exceptionally gifted with photographic talent coupled with a unique feeling of depth, Shinya Arimoto did not want to become a photographer by all means. He always showed reluctance against salary men, but a cook job and a job as a manga artist had been something he had been interested in for a long time.

 In 2006, Arimoto launched the ‘Lotus Root Gallery’ in Yotsuya, Tokyo with Keizo Motoda. After Motoda left the ‘Lotus Root Gallery’ in 2008, Arimoto renamed it to ‘Totem Pole Photo Gallery’. From the 四ッ谷三丁目 (Yotsuya san-chome) station, it is a 10 minute walk to the gallery. The route is well signposted, so you will most likely find it easily. The gallery looks a bit run down from outside, but very nice and clean when you go inside. At present, he is running the gallery with four other artists, viz. Tatsuya Shimohira, Naoki Sekiguchi, Tatsuro Hiruma, and Emi Fukuyama. 

One interesting photograph, taken in Shinjuku, Tokyo is part of the ‘Ariphoto Selection’ series. According to Shinya Arimoto, the person in it came from New York City and had no money and no passport on him. Arimoto bought him something to eat, chitchatted with him, and after that, he took a nice snapshot. Like most professional portrait photographs, the centered subject is in focus and the background is out of focus. The blurred background emphasizes the motion of the subject and prevents the viewer to distract from the subject. The lights and the illuminated signboards are producing an intense contrast. The man is wearing an oversized beanie, and he is carrying a sports bag. The weather seems to be cold, because he is also wearing a scarf (which is dotted by the way), and a kind of a Western leather jacket. The difference between a good photographer and an awesome photographer is, that the latter one is actually able to capture the whole atmosphere rather than just the particular objects. Fortunately, this is exactly what Arimoto does.

But there is still one problem. Nowadays, in the so-called digital age, where everyone can shoot and manipulate photographs easily, photographs aren’t enough to retain enough visitors anymore. As an artist, you have to establish some sort of interpersonal relationship with your visitors. This can be done either personally during an exhibition or indirectly through i.e. social networking. Luckily, we were able to talk to Shinya Arimoto and ask him some questions, and – apart from the fact that his pictures are really stunning – he turned out to be very frank and interesting. He welcomed us with a cup of ‘麦茶’ (barley tea), listened carefully to our questions, and gave us detailed and intelligent answers to each of them. He combines wisdom and knowledge from many aspects of life, and along with his extraordinary talent, his future definitely looks very bright.

And to close, this from Tama Group as well:
The more you know about Arimoto's  photographs, the more interested you feel. This is because his photographs talk with each object. He said he took pictures in a large city, so that almost all of his photographs in gallery are taken in Shinjuku, which is one of the largest neighborhoods in Tokyo. When we walk in the hustle and bustle of a big city, we usually do not pay attention to the individual.  He said that a big city is a very wide diversity of people. We often consider a crowd as a group, or we are not willing to keep our eyes on the individual. However, each people has a different experience, life and interest in their inner life. Arimoto keeps his eyes on a man, whom especially we tend to ignore in a crowd, for example people who do not have a house and people wearing peculiar clothes. Furthermore Arimito talks with him or her. One example is the photograph of a man hanging his head. His expression seems to contain sorrow and resignation. According to the photographer, he is from Vietnam. He came to Japan with his second Japanese mother, but he was introverted, he cannot speak Japanese, so that he cannot work and he wanders about Shinjuku.

As we come to know about the background of his subjects, we notice that people’s faces and emotions tell us his or her personality and life. His photographs are not seen, but felt. One of the evidences of this, his photographs are black-and-white. His photographs make us feel a personality and life through the lens, so that visual distraction of color would prevent us from being aware of something. His photographs make a featureless city colorful, and by this, you may be come to have fun when you walk in a big city.

'Rock My Sock' Group Visits Kula Gallery for Sakiko Nomura's "Requiem"

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　                   

Kula Gallery: Nomura Sakiko

~Requiem~

Kula Gallery is a small gallery located in a multi-tenant building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. When we visited there on the last day of the show, we found no other audience except us. We expected the gallery to be in a more well-known place, but instead we found the gallery on the fourth floor of an old multi-tenant building where it was located behind the main streets of Shinjuku. Like most other galleries, Kula Gallery had walls emphasized with white which centered its attention to the photography of the artist.

Nomura Sakiko is a prominent for taking pictures of naked man living in the light and the dark. The atmosphere of her photography is unique and mysterious which makes it attract the attentions of the audience. Her style, from the beginning of her history of photography to the newest, is known to be consistent; the content of her photography and the uniqueness have never changed.  While looking at her photography at the gallery show, I felt that her photography was metaphor to her life. It seemed as if she was struggling to find the light in the world and believed that we all existed between the crenel of the light and dark.

Her show “Requiem” was dedicated to a model who had passed away at the age of 43 in the winter of 2010. To Nomura, the model was her partner through the beginning of her  works to the recent. In memory of him, Nomura showed the photographies that portrayed the life of the man and scenarios of after his death. There were photographies of the man in nude, his hospital room, scenery outside of his room, and his funeral. There were no words, but from all that were shown had the atmosphere of sorrow and despair as if Nomura is telling us the significance of the model's existence in her life. Since most of Nomura's works consist of nudity, the first glance we take at her photography could be shocking and surprising, but when you take the time to look at it closely, we could feel no sense of lust but only of purity. When I examined her pictures, it was as if I was peeking through a hole to take a look at Nomura's world; a world that not everyone has the sense of viewing. It had a very unique atmosphere where it portrayed what kind of a person Nomura Sakiko is.

Nomura Sakiko has published many photography books in which most of the photography is in monochrome. Once in an interview with a photography magazine, Nomura said that most of her photography is monochrome because she feels that color could get in the way of her perception of things. She also stated that she does not have a particular rule she follows in the process of taking photography; she just follows her sense and timing. Nomura believes that photography is more than what our imagination and determination leads us to. She claims that her style of photography always comes naturally and never with preparation. 

A second member writes: 

Our visit to the Kula Gallery: Ten minutes and a bit through some narrow roads from Shinjuku station, we we were finally there in front of a cream colored building. Going up the stairs to the 4^th floor, we found out that the building was rather darker than usual and dusty in the corners, which made the building itself seem surreal. However, the darkness was completely gone when we arrived to the gallery. The gallery rather seemed futuristic because of the ceiling, the floor, and the walls all colored in white.

The gallery we went to was called Kula Gallery, presenting the pictures of Sakiko Nomura. The pictures that were displayed were mostly black and white, having high contrast on most of them, with a lot of light and shadows in play with the subject of the photograph. The subjects of the photos were mostly male models, particularly one guy who seemed somehow weak and fragile. This man and his life turn out to be the main theme of her collection in this gallery. He was a model she knew very well and took pictures of who died at the age of 42. He has been one of Sakiko's favorite models. Sakiko followed his life from his childhood to the last days of his life even to the funeral. Though the pictures weren't as shocking as it sounds, I felt a lot of sadness in him, and also from the photographer. It was like she wanted to keep him in the photo and make him stay alive in there. It started with a small boy lying in bed half naked, continued with a grown-up male lying in bed just like the first picture. At the end of it, there was a picture of a Christian funeral, a hospital bed, and a little plant on the windowsill, (as a comparison with the models life?), in his hospital room. The pictures there surely gave an unique impact on all of us.

Most of the pictures in her book were in color, with a couple of black and white pictures, and her style was a little different from what she exhibited in Kula Gallery. It is probably because of the theme being the male models death, and that being a little serious than her usual artwork. Sadly, we were not able to meet the photographer or to get details about the picture from the staff there but were able to read an article explaining her photos which really helped. Overall, our visit to the gallery was a very interesting in aspects of the collection theme, the photographers perspective, and her style.

 And this member writes:  

The gallery was white and simple and there were two rooms of photos. Each wall had only one row of photo so there weren't many, but they had some message on each photo. Most of the photos were black and white.

The concept was the man`s life who was her model and died recently. Every single photo had sadness: how the man looks, or how the photographer take the places. And more, the photos were black and white and so we see more sadness there.

There were two photos which I can`t forget about: First one is the man sitting on the chair and looking outside from the window. The photo is quite dark and we cannot really see many details. The man`s back is so skinny and he is naked. For me It seemed he is thinking about death and he realized he is actually dying, so he wants to see outside before he has no chance to see the view again. The second one is the dog`s photo. The dog is a Jack Russell Terrier, and he looked so sad. We don’t know actually know if he is sad and we cannot read the dogs emotions, but the dog which in the photo, he looked so sad and worried.

 The photos all have sadness, however we don’t feel bad about it or shouldn't see it. They had some warmness as well. if you see the photos you will have the feeling which you only can have when you see something good and you don’t know how to explain, but you know that it was good and worth to see it.

'Eduyama' Group Reviews: Shuhari Gallery, June 14th

From the Shuhari website

We went to gallery Shuhari on June 14th.

Gallery Shuhari which opened on October 10^th 2010 at Yotsuya 3 cho-me. The gallery name “ Shuhari ” owes its origin to the word “守破離”, which means 'taking over the master’s rule and sticking to their own way'. The member is 10 people. They met each other at the photography school “resist” taught by the famous photographers Masayuki Yoshinaga and Daido Moriyama. After graduating from that school, they wanted to display each work and they opened this gallery.

The title of exhibition we visited is ‘6月のさくら” which means “Cherry Blossom in June”. The photographers want people to see the cherry blossom again because many people refrained from seeing cherry trees, which called ohanami in Japanese, this year due to the effect of the quake on the eleventh of March. This exhibition took places from 14^th to 26^th of June. 

Seven of ten members displayed pictures this time. The wall of gallery was painted white. The place hanging picture was separated into the 7 places according to the photographer. There was a space we could drink for free, so I thought it was like a small cherry-blossom viewing, ohanami.

We focused on one picture. The title of this picture is “東京桜景”, which means “The View of Cherry Blossom in Tokyo”. Describing one picture, taken by Manabu Nakayama, (who was born in Kyoto in 1974, and always takes pictures of people and the city). The picture is black and white and it is framed and hanging on the wall. The shape of it is square.This picture is taken in perspective. There are a row of cherry blossom trees. It looks like an arch.  We can see the cherry tree in the center clearly. The tree has many branches. There is one big branch in the foreground of this picture (we cannot see the trunk but we can see only branch). We can see the shadow of the cherry blossom on the ground. Also, there are more than twenty people who are enjoying cherry blossom viewing. Some people are sitting and others are standing. The street to the right is crowded, but that of left is not so crowded. There are three people who seem to be a family: father, mother and son. They are walking the street and seeing the cherry trees. The boy is riding his father’s shoulder.  The woman is putting her hand on her husband back. People on the extreme left of this picture are sitting in the seat and enjoy talking. The woman sitting on the bench on the right of this picture is turning her head away.  The people on the center of this picture are like silhouette. Each of them in this picture enjoys seeing cherry tree differently.

From another member:

The picture is set in a famous spot of cherry blossom viewing in Tokyo, since cherry blossoms are endlessly lined up, which is drawn in perspective. The lanterns also express the Japanese culture in this photograph. There are approximately 25 people in the picture, who seem to be gathered by a family or friends. Especially, the family drawn in the foreground and left of the image portrays the typical happy family because a child is on his father’s shoulder and a mother holds her arm on her husband’s back. Such portrayal of family explains that the cherry blossom viewing is one of the calmed, peaceful time and the culture in Japan. Therefore it can be said that the existence of cherry blossom to Japanese people is very special compared to the culture of the other countries. However, it is important to note that the structure of this picture does not only focus on the cherry blossom: Half top of the picture is filled up with cherry blossom but half below is all people. Therefore, it is clear that the artist also focuses on human. In addition, unlike the other photographs in the show, this picture is in black and white, which is one of the useful techniques used in this photograph. When one wishes to focus on the cherry blossom itself, one would expect the photograph to be in a color because the beauty of the cherry blossom can be seen in its color. However, because this picture is in black and white, the artist tries to express the traditional holiday of Japanese culture, which is happy and relaxed. At this point, the reason why the cherry blossom and people are equally structured is clear. Furthermore the black and white pictures usually indicate the older times: although it is not very clear when this picture was taken, by doing so the artist portrays the atmosphere of “tradition”. This makes sense because tradition always involves human existence, which can also be seen from this photograph. Because it is known that Manabu Nakayama is a person who keeps taking the photographs of people, it may be that he tried to express the symbolic meaning of cherry blossom in Japanese culture.   

Also from this member:

The gallery was divided into seven sections, which is divided according to the number of artists attended to this exhibition. In addition, many of the pictures were square, although they vary in the size. Most of the pictures were in the frames and were lit by direct small-lighting, although some were not in the frames or were lit by the spotlights. The reason why the spotlights were used in few of the pictures is because, according to the member of the gallery, those photographers wanted to express the “fearsome” atmosphere through changing the lights. As it can be said from this, although one would expect to see beautiful image of cherry blossoms, the photographs were so different from each person and they all expressed different atmospheres. For example, the one that expressed “fearsome atmosphere” was a collage of the human photographs that structures one whole piece but still portrays the cherry blossom, whereas there was a picture that directly portrays the cherry blossom but took garbage with the tree to express 21^st century’s image of cherry blossoms.
And Another Viewpoint: 
Time: According to this photo, people who are 40s and 50s don't have any food and just enjoy the view. However, young people have food and enjoy talking, eating, and looking the view. From these facts, I can say that it is not lunch time because most of people don't have any food. However, i cannot say exactly time when this photo was taken by the photographer. It is because the photograph doesn't have any colors at all, in other words, it is a monochrome photograph. We always distinguish the time unconsciously from the color, so we cannot tell the time only from this picture. So why monochrome? Why did the photographer take the monochrome photo? if he wants to tell us how beautiful the cherry blossom trees are, he didn't do that. Then, what did he want to tell us? I have 2 ideas for it. First, I think he wanted us to see the people who are enjoying the view of cherry blossom. According to the photo, we can see how much we Japanese love it and enjoy it every spring. Second, he wanted to tell us how appealing the cherry blossoms are to us. Even if they are in the monochrome photo, they still have a power to attract to us. We can feel it more than usual through the monochrome photo.
Finally, this observation from another member:
It is a tree-lined road of cherry trees. They are full of bloom and make shadow on ground. The picture is taken in perspective. It makes us feel there is a long line of cherry trees. Festival lanterns are hung on it. And there are a lot of people. So I guess it is a scene of flower viewing and the photographer seems to be in a famous spot for it. I can see a big bough at the front. Every tree spreads their branches. It looks like an arch. The half up side of the picture is cherry blossoms, and the half down side is people who are watching up it. Some of them are sitting on benches (those who are at the right side) or ground (at the left side) and others are standing. The right side is crowded with many people. It is conspicuous that only one woman turns her face to us in this picture. In contrast, the left is not crowded. Among many people, we notice 3 people look a family at the lower left. A man looks father carries his child on his shoulders. A woman seems mother looks up cherry blossoms and puts her hand on the man’s back. They are walking on a street to the back nestling each other. Their backs look happy. It seems that the photographer took this picture focusing on not only cherry blossoms but also on the family. Only Mr.Nakayama took black and white photographs in the 7 members. I don't know why he did so. When we hear word "sakura", maybe a lot of people imagine beautiful blossoms of pink color. But Mr.Nakayama chose monochrome. Personally I think, black and white colors make the picture look more comfortable and he wanted to express traditional and happy holiday in Japan by using theme "sakura" rather than beautifulness of cherry blossoms.
Group 5, 'Eduyama' consists of four members. We welcome your comments and feedback.