Seeing is Believing

(aka, Photography Course, Part II: The Unseen World)

So it was time to make the chimichangas.  I had some ideas and enough glow sticks to throw a rave.  What I needed to make it real, though, was some scenery.  After all, a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a youkai in my bathroom just isn't a youkai.  (I mean, unless it's, like, one of those filth-licking bathroom youkai.  Or, a toilet ghost.  Or...well, forget about my bathroom already!)  I was thinking along the lines of temples and shrines.  At the right time of day, I almost wouldn't need to do anything else.

"Hitodama" - light painting at the cemetery of Shoin-Ji, Yokohama

I decided to start with something simple - a ball of spirit fire, or hitodama.  It took me two shoots to figure out how to get what I wanted.  There are a lot of factors, but most the most important ones seemed to be what to set the ISO at and how long to keep the shutter open.  I had to figure out how to move through the cemetery to get the swirls the way I wanted them, and that meant delaying the shutter to get into position.  I also had to move at the right speed to let the sensor pick up the light, and know when to cover my light with my hand so that it wasn't picked up.  I set up in a corner of the cemetery with some bushes behind me, and while I don't creep out easily sometimes noises from the other side of the brush unnerved me, especially the darker it got.  In spite of the hard work, I was pretty proud of what I got and encouraged by my results.

"Curse" - Light painting, long exposure, and some photoshop, at Nyotai Jinja, Kawasaki

And then I started on the second photo.  There is a ritual in Japan where you supposedly curse someone by visiting a shrine during the ox hour (between 1-3 a.m.) and nail a straw effigy into the sacred tree.  As I was scouting locations I noticed that the shrine I pass on my way to taiko class has one such tree, so I decided to stage my second piece there.  Rather than just relying on light painting, though, I used long exposure and a little cosplay to make an oni appear.  I had tried writing the kanji for curse when I completed my initial light painting experiments and it was hard as hell, so this time I used a stencil.  Which was great and all, but I never seemed to be able to get it into the right place.  Once again, I needed a second shoot to get everything right.  However, I got kicked out of the shrine the second time.  The owner came over after about 15 minutes to see what I was doing and asked me to leave, that the shrine was for praying, not photos.  Then he came back and said it was okay, but asked me to do it later.  I'm sure my attire did nothing for their patronage.  I came back after taiko class, but I was tired and not really feeling it anymore, so even though I was trying to avoid it, I ended up using photoshop to get what I needed.

"Shirohebi" - light painting at Kikunaike Benzaiten Jinja

My third apparition brought god into it...or rather a goddess.  Many of the gods of Japan have messenger animals, usually notable by their color, white.  From my study of Benzaiten last year, I knew her animal was the white snake, so after school one day I stopped at the Benzaiten shrine next to my train station, and spent about an hour trying to drag the glowstick in a way that would look like a snake.  I made the mistake of wearing light colors that day, so I had to stay out of the shot to keep the camera's sensor from picking me up, but I finally felt like I was getting comfortable with the technique.

"Kodama" - long exposure photography in Aokigahara Jukai

Unfortunately light painting will only take you so far, though.  I knew I was going to need to make some pieces to stand in for some of the youkai.  For my kodama photo, though, I decided I could hardly do better than appropriating the appearance of Ghibli's kodama, as a tribute to my favorite of their masterpieces, Princess Mononoke.  These I found on eBay, 5 pieces for about 3 bucks, so I bought three of them and took them out to Aokigahara.  If there is anywhere in the world tree spirits still thrived, it would be there.  Originally I thought it might be hard to get them to stand up on their own - even in my kitchen they had a tendency to fall over - so I spent about two hours that morning trying to glue the little bastards to a styrofoam board, and then hide said board with moss.  It was not a success.  By the time I took them out to start shooting in the forest, they had come unglued.  Oops.  Luckily it worked out to my advantage, since eventually it occurred to me that if I removed them during the long exposure shot, I could get the transparent effect that Miyazaki gives his kodama as they run through the forest.

"Shichifukujin" - light painting at a stream in Yokohama

And I suppose I could have done the same thing for my Seven Gods of Fortune - using statues or sculptures created as devotional objects.  But I'd been pretty inspired by the o-hina ningyo I made for my third assignment and wanted to see if I could improve on it.  Better boat.  Paper dolls with individualized features.  You know, the sort of pain-in-the-ass attention to detail that I wouldn't be able to finish properly.  I actually intended my boat to have a sail, and for the dragon's face to be painted, and a little more to those green designs on the side of the boat.  But I've been fighting a sense of inertia over the last month or so, and it wasn't until the final week of the course when I forced myself to sit down and finish what I could.  With about 24 hours til my bus was set to pull out of Shinjuku for golden week, I trekked out to the stream in Higashiterao with all my goodies to get my shots.  I'd like to actually do this one again, but I guess we'll see if I can manage it before the end of all things.

"Amefuri Kozo" - taken at Myoren-Ji Temple

I'd also like to redo my Amefuri Kozo.  When I realized I was running out of time, I decided he'd be an easier youkai to make than a kappa, my original intent.  I had a small paper umbrella I bought in Asakusa, and after cutting off the head of one of my dolls I had a halfway decent model.  What he needs, though, is rain.  It was supposed to rain the morning I left on vacation, but it didn't happen.  With the rainy season on it's way, I'm sure I'll have the chance to fix this one.

"Kyuu-bi" - Light painting at Etchuinari Jinja

The last creature I added to my portfolio was the Kyuu-bi - the nine-tailed fox.  I planned to use a fox statue from an Inari shrine, but as it happens, I don't actually live near any.  Luckily the one in Toyama wasn't too far out of the way.  

Along with the photos we had to submit an artist statement.  Believe it or not, I've never had to write one for a class before.  What I actually found most challenging about it was limiting my writing.  I had so many ideas I wanted to express - and have even more now, thanks to Maria teaching me about shinrei shashin during the nihonga lesson where I showed her my photos - but this kind of writing is supposed to be concise.  Ironically, I also struggled to put into words how the artists I researched inspired my work.  This is something I'm supposed to be teaching my DP students, but I struggled to quantify exactly what I was taking from their work.  Regardless, here it is:

Artist Statement

We live in an age of contradiction.  According to the internet, if you don’t have pictures of something, it didn’t happen.  At the same time, the use of photoshop has become so ingrained in contemporary visual culture that we can no longer claim that seeing is believing.  This body of work aims to draw on both sides of this paradox as I explore Japan’s folklore surrounding the supernatural. 

Japan has a rich culture surrounding the paranormal.  The terms youkai and yurei are catch-all words for what in the West we call demons and ghosts, but they include a host of creatures, each, according to the lore, with their own distinct appearance and habits.  Artists continually draw on these legends, from ukiyo-e printmakers to contemporary animators, with the result that they are a well-known and easily recognizable part of Japan’s visual culture.  After exploring long-exposure photography I felt that this technique had great potential to uncover the hidden world of Japanese folklore.  

My photographic practice up to this point has been documentary in nature, showing the places I’ve been and the people I’ve visited. In Photography: A Critical Introduction, Wells states that “Historically, tension between the photograph as document and the personal expressiveness of art has been at the heart of debates as to the status of the photograph as art” (Wells, 2009, p. 260).  One of my goals in exploring Japan’s supernatural traditions was to bridge this philosophical gap, drawing on my strengths as a documentary photographer while introducing a more expressive artistic element to my work. 

Throughout its history, photography has been used to present similarly constructed realities.  Sometimes this construction is subtle.  The photographer Edward Curtis published images of Native Americans which documented a romanticized vision of these peoples, using clothing and props that helped to tell the story he wanted to share; a story which upon closer inspection proved to be fiction (PhotoDocus, 2014).  At other times, it is more blatant.  Such is the case of the Cottingley fairy photographs produced by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths between 1917 and 1920.  Some of these realities are unintentionally presented.  Photos of far-off places as seen in National Geographic, in a grandparent’s scrapbook, or even on a friend’s facebook timeline may give the viewer a mistaken impression of what those places are actually like.  My work embraces this tradition while subverting it, using the exotic architecture of Japan’s temples and shrines as a backdrop to present the unseen world in which to this day the Japanese, at least to some extent, still believe. 

In order to create these images, I used a variety of approaches.  During my exploration of photography techniques this term I was particularly inspired by painting with light.  In order to better understand the possibilities of light painting, I studied one of its progenitors, Man Ray.  In 1935 he produced his first light painting, which he called space writing (Space Writing, 2011).  It is a self-portrait in which his face is obscured by the writing he has created with a penlight.  Although I am using light painting in a similar way, I find Man Ray’s photograph particularly applicable to my body of work because of his interest in surrealism, and the worlds of the mind.  Unlike his automatic writing, though, my use of light painting is deliberate.  The lines and shapes I include in my work are by no means random, but rather connect with the traditions of Japan’s supernatural beliefs.  This is done specifically so that viewers familiar with youkai stories will recognize them. 

I feel my work also has a connection to that of Sandy Skoglund.  As I planned these images, I realized that I would not be able to capture these creatures merely with light painting.  Skoglund creates and photographs installations where man and nature interact in surreal ways, sculpting the actual animals that inhabit those spaces.  Similarly, I spent a great deal of time creating some of my subjects, notably Japan’s seven lucky gods and their treasure ship.  However, in contrast to Skoglund’s carefully crafted rooms, my pieces interact with the spaces of the real world, spaces which feel familiar to residents of Japan.  Her work also relies largely on color to create emphasis and mood, while this series of photos uses light and shadow much more heavily. 

When I first considered Japan as the subject of this portfolio I planned to do so in a very intellectual way, depicting the reality of Japan behind the exotic image most Westerners have of geisha strolling under cherry blossom trees.  Upon reflection, though, I had a hard time envisioning what those photos would look like.  In many ways my decision to move to Japan was about escaping reality; it seemed then only fitting that my work focus on the sense of magic inherent in Japanese folklore that continues to captivate me.  I hope that as others view these photos that they can share that wonder with me. 

Usually an artist statement is drafted after the work is finished.  Ours were due two weeks before the final submission of our portfolios, and during that time I came to the decision that I actually wanted to show my settings without their inhabitants, kind of a seen/unseen approach.  The truth is, I wasn't going to be able to complete 15 youkai pictures by my deadline, so I guess in essence these photos are filler.  I tried to make them meaningful, though, tried to show the shrines and temples in a different light, hopefully one that adds a layer of meaning to my work.  My classmates and professor didn't seem to view them as filler, so I guess I managed alright.  I won't bore you with all of them, but if you'd like to see the whole album, it's on Flickr.  And just like that, my semester is over.  Although I feel a little at a loss what to do with all the time I'm not taking photos, I honestly need the time to extricate myself from Japan.