Hello again! Joel Pulliam here. This is my monthly newsletter, in which I think and write about my own photography and the photographic scene in Tokyo. (If this isn’t what you thought you’d signed up for, there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom.)
I have just finished a two week long takeover of the Instagram account of the UP photographers collective. UP is a group of some of the best known names in the street photography genre: Joel Meyerowitz, Matt Stuart, and David Gibson, among others. For their account, I curated and discussed 70 photos of Tokyo taken by Japanese photographers.
What is street photography? Different photographers provide different definitions. Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck suggest that it consists of “candid pictures of everyday life in the street.” That is widely accepted as the core of it, though many photographers embrace the term for photography that isn’t necessarily candid, or of living beings, or in the street. Bruce Gilden threw up his hands and said street photography is, “when you can smell the street.” I suppose that works for New York, but not so much for the clean streets of Tokyo.
If you’re interested in what street photography is (and isn’t), I highly recommend David Gibson’s book, Street Photography: A History in 100 Iconic Images. David probes the possible definitions of street photography in his introduction, and his selected photographs wonderfully illustrate the contours of the genre.
But back to the takeover: “street photography” is not an established genre in Japanese photography. Some Japanese photographers use that label, but many don’t — even those whose work would be readily classified as street photography by Western critics. So for the takeover, I tried to show the range of photography that might conceivably fit within the street photography label, including some that push at its boundaries. I brought together work from the 1930s to the present day, taken across many different parts of Tokyo. If this sounds like it might be your thing, head on to over to @upphotographers and check out my recent series of posts. I certainly enjoyed putting it together.
Now I don’t necessarily identify myself as a street photographer. I’ve certainly been influenced by work within that genre, and some of my photography could comfortably be called “street photography,” but not all of it.
One of my ongoing projects, though, is very street influenced.
The Ginza district of Tokyo is synonymous with luxury shopping. The main avenue is lined with the flagship shops of such brands as Chanel, Givenchy, and Dior, while the side streets are filled with elegant boutiques.
Until 2020, Ginza was a draw for tourists from throughout the world. But then came COVID-19, social distancing, and travel regulations that bar most foreign entry into Japan. The shops are still open, but the crowds are gone. Japanese shoppers still roam the streets, but the joy of shopping seems to have gone.
So, here is a first view from some of the photos from my ongoing project, “The Loneliness of the Luxury Shopper.”
Here in Tokyo, we’re still not sure when the travel restrictions will be lifted. And even once they are, it may be longer before tourists return in significant numbers. Until then, I’ll continue working on this series.
At the same time, I’ll be continuing to make progress on my book, Old River. Already it feels like it is taking on a life of its own. I have just this week received a draft of the Japanese translation from my translator and am reviewing it. So far, I am very pleased and excited. Once the translation is finalized, the next step will be the layout of the text.
Though I’ve been busy, I am glad that I found time to visit the “Hallucinating Lenses” exhibition that is now on view at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. The ten recently acquired prints from Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens series are clearly the star of the show. The large gelatin silver prints are beautiful and powerful. However, I was equally taken with a selection of smaller photographs by Toshimi Kayama of Tokyo’s waterways, documenting the transformation of the city during the Japan’s economic bubble in 1980s. And there’s a host of other great photographers, too, from Edward Steichen (the first photographer in David Gibson’s book) and Eugene Atget, and on up to Kikuji Kawada’s The Last Cosmology. If you’re in Tokyo, its well worth a visit.
See you next month!
Joel