Walking back from Kappabashi Street to Asakusa I met this wall and then two young photographers wandered in . . . Does this image tell you about them, about me or about how you see?
Any years ago I watched a short documentary film of A.Wyeth in which he discussed his painting of the Kuerners, the one where he is holding the rifle, and they are standing in front of the white wall. Wyeth discusses his concern with the white wall and how he redid it multiple times until was right.
Light is what a photograph is, but so is Lens.
Lens is how about your personal feelings with the content of the image.
I am an adjustable kind of person so I have a zoom lens. Actually I am old, its easier to carry around one lens than multiple cameras.
I do not know anything about these two people, just two photographers on a street in Tokyo between Asakusa and Kappabashi Street. I was admiring the reflections on the wall and they were admiring other things,
For me, the highest Art level of photography is photojournalism. For people photographs aways are about reality, no matter how abstract is a photograph people unconsciously ask “ But what is it?” They need to have that answered before they can visually experience line, texture, shape, color, etc. My sister and I on our way to learn our mother had a stroke, lost her memory and was never to know who we were again.
Second is the is snapshot, people love to take photographs and snapshots are about the experience of taking the photograph or being photographed, and not the photograph itself.
There is always the “realisim” of a photograph—is it evidence incur or insurance claims, proof of infidelity or a family history of a great grand parent.
Photograph is using light to Mae an image, The visual experience is in the interaction between the light and the eye , but the human experience is between the eye and the human mental process, and these are different.
The eye is happy with line, shape, color,texture but the human mental process is not satisfied with those things, it wants words, categories to classifiy the experience and that is what “understanding“ means a photograph means to people.
But it was not always this way, this is what McCluhan is writing about how print so radically changed the meaning being human.
Japan is both so modern and yet so many of the modern inventions do not quite fit into the Japanese world bandits fine that they stay outside, its alright to keep the invaders out.
The old shows its age and new just walks by . . .
Japanese may not care about the meaning, the color, the experience of the the shape, the color, the line is enough. Who nos where the shadow goes?
Sometimes you do not need to speak the language ,just drinking sake and eating edamame with people you meet passing through Ueno is enough.
snaegele EmptyPage Blog 