Place M, Group 5 'edu YAMA' , and the 'Mirror' Exhibition

We visited photo gallery place M on November 18^th. The gallery is located at the Shinzyuku-Gyoen. And it is a nice coffee shop neighborhood. (We had break and meeting for the presentation there like, before when we went to another photo gallery). The gallery was very simple. It was a square and white-walled room. There were about 20 pictures. All of the pictures were human faces. The gallery had a mysterious atmosphere, it felt weird when we entered because we were surrounded by human faces’ pictures. There was a poem “Mirror” written by the photographer on the wall. The exhibition was named for it.
The photographer is Tamotsu Yamaguchi. He was born in 1948 in Chiba prefecture and is 60 years old now. He was interesting, and had deep thoughts about education and human psychology and he very nicely and answered our questions. He graduated from Musashino Art University and worked as an oil painter. However, he felt difficulty working as a painter so he became a school teacher for handicapped children. Working there for 10 years, he took pictures of children there 15 years ago. He said he cannot take pictures if he does not know the children individually –he took pictures more as teacher-student relationship, not as a photographer.

Although the pictures cannot be uploaded on the blog due to the copy rights, I will try to explain one specific picture we most liked. It is the picture of a boy. In the gallery, the children taken are basically from 5^th grade to middle school and this boy is from middle school. The photographer Mr. Yamaguchi said this boy is very sensitive and liked to listen to the sound of the piano. In fact, his sensitivity is vividly expressed in the picture. In this picture, it looks like he is afraid or being nervous of something. However at the same time, it seems like he is trying to face something invisible but yet very powerful. In my opinion, I think that is why we can feel some kind of strength in his face.

As it can be seen, the pictures were all taken in front of a blackboard. Mr. Yamaguchi said the light on the roof near the board was in a good place because it lights their faces nicely when the pictures are in black and white. He said he likes to take pictures in black and white because it can indirectly express the essentiality of the object taken. He said he used a twin-lens reflex camera. He said that twin-lens reflex camera is a “humanlike camera” because there is nothing that disturbs between the object and the photographer. That is why he was able to speak with children while taking the pictures.

All the photos exhibited in that gallery captured only children’s face. It is actually very difficult to take one’s natural face directly from front. So why did he intentionally take this kind of picture? That’s because he felt very strong internal power from them. This message is also conveyed in the title of this exhibition, “Mirror”. The title “Mirror” was given by a famous poet, Sakon So, who recently passed away. Mr. So wrote a poem “Mirror” for him, also expressing the strength of the children. Yamaguchi said he really likes this title and he said the title is very important. When we looked at photos, we could feel something strong from them. At the same time, we felt their beauty of innocence and their lovable personality, which in a way forces us to face to our internal personality.