Pierfrancesco Celada
Japan I Wish I Knew Your Name
During a brief visit to Japan I was soon fascinated by the isolation and loneliness I was feeling in the streets. It started as a personal journey, a foreigner traveling in an alien environment. However, while observing people, it was clear that even locals were not able to interact successfully.
The Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka Megalopolis, also called Taiheiyō Belt is a unique example of urban agglomeration with an estimated population of over 80 million people. Despite this incredibly high number of chances to interact, it seems that society is moving in the opposite direction. If, in small societies, people have more of an active social role, with multiple connections and greater effect on the community; in a larger society some people struggle to communicate, or tend to maintain close contact with only a small number of the closest friends or family members. Some people tend to privilege other communicative systems offered by modern media and tools; others have an even more extreme approach.
“Nobody is ‘together’ in his work.” Ueyama Kazuki
The purpose of this investigation was to create awareness and highlight the problems that modernization and the rapid changes in the environment create in our lives. Is it still important to be, or feel, part of a group? Do we feel part of the environment? Are we alone in the crowd?
I am currently crowd-funding to produce the photobook Hitoride (Literally by Yourself; Alone) based on the project.
Bio
Pierfrancesco Celada (b.1979, Italy), after completing a PhD in Biomechanics is now concentrating his attention on a long-term project on life in Modern Megalopolis.In 2011 he won the Ideastap and MagnumPhoto Photographic Award and interned at Magnum Photo. His work has been exhibited internationally and his projects published on Newsweek, Times Lightbox, Amica, D-LaRepubblica among others. He is currently working on the second chapter of Modern Megalopolis: “People Mountain People Sea” exploring life in Chinese Megacities.
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Love it. Would pair well with a long form piece of writing about the issue.
Interesting essay, Japan seems a bit of an extreme case, but I’ve felt what you describe in cities before. I liked that the photographs are all bright, and ‘lively’ but the content makes them feel stark.
If people are interested in Japanese culture, specifically their working ethic, these videos might be of interest: http://mediastorm.com/clients/japans-disposable-workers-for-pulitzer-center
Japan is a very old and very complex society with myriad facets, environments, milieus, and subcultures, full of contradictions, whose social mores and human interactions are often not particularly visible or accessible to a casual foreign visitor. Having said that, yes the ennui and loneliness that often affect people in contemporary urban Japan, particularly in the sprawling half-built-up open spaces of the urban fringe along urban river banks and auto transport infrastructure routes that Mr. Celada depicts here, are a significant element in contemporary Japan. But only one element, and looking at Mr. Celada’s photos in this essay, it seems to me that only photos No.1 and Nos. 13-14-15 speak directly to this issue.
The complexity, richness, depth, and contradictions of Japan, and its general inaccessibility and opaqueness to outsiders mostly ignorant of the language and without a role to play in Japanese society, are such that foreign visitors often make the mistake of seeing one or two facets and believing they are universally representative. Even many long-term foreign residents often see mostly the Japan they want to see.
Still, I think the topic described in the artist’s statement is one worth pursuing visually, especially in the context of Japan. But with the exception of those 4 photos I listed, I think most of the images do disappointingly little justice to that theme, one that I often saw manifest during twenty years of residence in Japan. At the same time, Japan can be a place of incredible human warmth and a sensitivity to others’ feelings and dignity in human interactions that I have rarely if ever seen or felt in western countries.
Interesting in many ways, but especially for me in the context of the engaged with the subjects vs. outsider argument that often pops up in photography discussions. I am a natural outsider and prefer at least a measure of cold emotional distance in my personal work, but I have learned to engage and get close on a personal level because a lot of work demands it. It’s nice to see someone who revels in it get published here.
However, the opening line “During a brief visit to Japan” was a bit unsettling. It gave me visions of Western Guy dressed with three cameras around his neck dressed in Khakis with many pockets jumping out of a helicopter to understand and explain a distant culture to the civilized folk back home before the helicopter comes back to pick him up in a few days. But hey, sometimes a fresh, foreign eye sees deep insights that the hometown crowd overlooks due to familiarity. Nothing wrong with that. If it actually works.
Still, it is unfortunate that there are no Japanese photographers, much less any kind of Japanese photographic tradition, that might provide a different look. Oh wait…
MW
I had the same reaction as you did of someone “helicoptering” in — better for the photographer not to state that his reaction to a culture is based on the two-week visit, but that doesn’t mean that the views of an outsider and first impressions cannot be important or effective.
There are aspects of this essay that I like, such as all this under a bright sun. For me, though, having lived in Japan two years, if I go back to my initial memories they are of the constant crowds all over, and that one is always trying to avoid to bump into people. There may be loneliness in those crowds, but they are crowds, in this respect, in this small selection it looks too much as if people are mostly alone in the landscape, even if it is an urban landscape.
SIDEY ATKINS
Absolutely, agree about the warmness of people that one can find: it is interesting that Japanese may not interact with strangers in public, except in terms of politeness — and, sometimes, like anywhere else, with brusqueness — but that in sushi bars, sitting at the counter, for example, people often start conversations with strangers in a very lively way. It’s one of the joys of eating at the counter.
It is interesting to read the novels of Natsuo Kirino: “Out”, “Grotesque” and “Real World”, which deal with some of the issues addressed here, as well of subcultures.
It’s not a bad essay. Even the best have a hard time creating brilliance on a short schedule. It usually takes many trips to, or a long residence in, a place to really start producing great work.
I think some of the photos do not support the theme:
#6 to me is the opposite of the theme: they are obviously interacting with people on the other side of the net. This is in stark contrast to #2 which really does play to the theme.
#14 is just a guy on his own. Would you have taken a photo of people back home, say, fishing, and hold that up as an example of being unable to socialize? In a similar vein #3, #4, #8, #12, #17 are just people by themselves either because there aren’t others around to socialize with, or simply because people need time alone at times in their lives.
That said, its a quirky street photography essay.
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