'Sleepy Fish' (Group 2) Surface for the 'Portrait Gallery'

  Our group went to a gallery, the Portrait Gallery.  It is located near Sophia University, about a five minute walk from the Yotsuya station, near the Cozy Corner.  It is on the fifth floor of a book store.  The gallery is open everyday, from ten to six except on Golden Week and the days before and after the New Year.

 The Portrait Gallery was organized by the Japan Photo Culture Association which has over three thousand galleries. This gallery was built in July 2002. The gallery was built to help the Japanese culture prosper by using photographs.  For this reason, the gallery exhibits works that were taken by both professional and amateur photographers.

When we went to this gallery, a photo club named Pleasant Club was exhibiting photographs.  This club was established in October 1921, and this exhibition was held to celebrate their ninetieth anniversary. The members include professional, ex-professional, and amateur photographers.  Since there are many people of different ages in this club, the photographs are taken by both film and digital cameras.  There were also both monochrome and colored photographs.  There were over fifty photographs exhibited, and some pictures were ones taken in the Taisho era.

 Another member describes meeting a photographer there:

  I would like to write about a photographer, Akihiro Murayama. Fortunately when we go to this gallery, we were able to meet him and have time to talk to him. Actually he was kind enough to tell us his life story and how he took photographs.

  First, I will write about his life style. He told us that He got interested in photography when he was young because his father was also a photographer. So he had chance to take photographs in his childhood. He now has special feelings for photograph because he has done it for such a long time. But he has not gone to any special art school, he has studied photograph by himself. At present, he belongs to a photograph club, Pleasant Club, which was founded in 1921 and this year this photograph club celebrates their ninetieth anniversary of the foundation. If you want to take part in this photograph club, feel free to make a contact with them. Their office is placed in Setagaya-ku. This time after visiting this art portrait gallery, I learned that being a photographer is not only way to become a professional. Even though Akihiro Murayama is an amateur photographer, his work is very beautiful and I think he is professional photographer. 

This member writes about an image seen at the gallery:

I will write about a photograph taken by Akihiro Murayama. He was at the gallery so we asked him about the picture. The picture was taken at a shrine’s pond in spring. Petals are on the surface and grasses are growing around. We can also see the wave on the surface. According to Akihiro, that wave was made by carp. Carp swam swiftly and the wave’s shape was made circle. The title of the picture is “The last curtain of dance”. I could not understand the meaning of this title. However, this title has deep meaning. “dance” implies “Petals” and “the last curtain” means that petals will sink in the pond at last. Akihiro wanted to say that petals move slowly and that slow moves are beautiful.

Akihiro said that he waited hours and hours to take this one shot. He often goes to

this shrine and takes pictures at the pond. He had taken this shot with color film but

after he took it, he changed the color to black and white. Monochromatic picture shows cool atmosphere than color picture. I could not believe that this picture was taken by amateur. Akihiro’s photographic technique are no inferior to a first class photographer.