Dear Friends,
This month, I have some very good news to share.
My handmade book, The Consolation of Dew, has won first place in the Book category at the 2020 Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA).
I am incredibly grateful. I wish I could also use words like thrilled or happy. But the book is my expression of grief, and when I open it, that emotion still comes to the fore. I truly do, though, feel grateful and honored.
The award especially a lot much because, for a time, I wondered if I would ever be able to photograph again. Or if there was even reason to; photography seemed futile. But then, there were certain images, if only a few, that spoke to me, that bore witness of photography’s ability to go where words couldn’t.
When I picked up a camera again, it wasn’t with a book in mind; I simply wanted to express things that felt necessary but that I didn’t know how to say, not even to myself.
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes that, after her husband’s death:
“I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only be those who were themselves recently bereaved.”
Which was my experience as well. And so I began walking the streets of my neighborhood, never more than a few minutes from home, but feeling invisible and seeing things I had not seen before.
I was surprised when David Alan Harvey suggested that my photos might be right for an essay in his Burn magazine. I sent a large number off to the editors; I didn’t have the mind to pick which ones I thought were right or to put them in order. Thankfully, Burn did that for me, and skillfully. The sequence the editors crafted was different than the one I might have, but from it, a narrative emerged. And it showed me that my photos could work together, that an arc could be formed.
I began to print them, to see how they connected, what new meanings were evoked when photos were grouped together in different ways. How they might tell my story.
I found a symbolic frame for my photos in the dimensions of the 経本, the book of Buddhist sutras that are read for the dead. The 49-day Buddhist mourning period suggested to me a book of 49 photos.
I divided the photos into groups of seven, and for each of these “weeks” I translated a haiku from Edo era Japan, addressing the death of a child. It turns out there are many, each providing a different perspective that resonated with my photos.
As my photographs began coalescing around the haiku, I began to print them on mulberry paper, which I hand folded. I placed the photographs, some larger and some smaller, across the bends, so that they would reveal themselves as the book unfolded.
From thousands of photos, I iterated over and over until I knew I had chosen the photos that were necessary and that the sequence was true. Then, for the completed book, I constructed a traditional triptych storage box. To protect the book, but also to suggest historical precedents and to slow the reader down, to engage them in the act of opening.
It was done.
In past years, the International Foto Awards has held exhibitions for the winners. Whether that can still be done may depend on how the coronavirus pandemic is managed. And though I didn’t make this book with a publisher in mind, I do hope to yet find a way to publish a limited edition. If I can do it right, without compromising the vision.
But before I figure that out, I am pushing to bring The Old River to completion. My meditation on history and memory and change, as reflected in a river that runs through my neighborhood.
Why will this book be first? Because I have the right energy, I am in a groove. The photography is done, the sequencing is done, my writing is very close to done. The physical components are not yet decided, so for now there is the pleasure in talking to printers, to bookbinders, learning what is possible, thinking through how I can make this a truly special, and beautiful, book. I hope to tell you quite a bit more about that in an upcoming newsletter.
In other news, I have temporarily taken over @andthelastwaves, the Instagram account of the AND THE LAST WAVES photo collective. They’ve graciously allowed me to post anything I want to on their account for two weeks, and so I am using the opportunity to share and discuss images of waves from my collection of Japanese photobooks. If you are interested in Japanese photography, check it out.
And that’s all until next month! Thank you for choosing to receive my newsletter. I know we all have limited time, and I am glad you are spending some of yours with me.
But if you do wish to unsubscribe, the link is at the bottom. Alternatively, if you only recently signed up and would like to browse the previous issues, you can find them here.
Until next time, continue to take care of yourselves, and each other.
Joel