Hwy. 339, near Wingo, KY, September, 2006.

Click here for gallery.

Click here for the series.

Ikebukuro, Tokyo, July 23, 2004. Leica M6, CV 35mm f/2.5 “P”, Fuji Neopan 1600.

Some new photos for your enjoyment. Click here for the series.

Kanda-Jimbocho, Tokyo, July 10, 2004. Leica M6, CV 35mm f/2.5 P, Konica Pan 400

Here’s a new series shot in Tokyo’s Kanda-Jimbocho, often called the largest book market in the world due to the high concentration of new and secondhand bookstores one can find there (135-plus stores). Wasn’t feeling very engaged when shooting these, hence the series’ title. Perhaps I’ve been too engaged in shooting of late. Sometimes it’s good to relax a bit.

I previously wrote about this area of Tokyo here.

Ramen is one of those foods that exist beyond my understanding, simply because I can’t (or choose not to) eat food that contains red meat or chicken. (It should also be said that I’m not a huge fan of noodle soups like udon for example so I don’t feel like I’m missing so much.) So, I stand outside on occassion, especially when the shop is “famous,” and wonder a bit what all the fuss is about. This particular shop, in Nakano (one of Tokyo’s “Ramen Towns” apparently), is called Aoba and Naoko confirms that it is indeed famous and consistently in the top 10 of ramen establishments. I’ll leave those assessments to the aficionados but will chime in that it is certainly on my current short list of top 10 fascinating shop exteriors in Tokyo.

Click here for the series.

I’ve put together a small gallery of photos showing some of what I’ve been working on the past few months. Click here to enter gallery.

Shinjuku Gyoen, Tokyo, March 29, 2004. Bessa R2, CV 35mm f/2.5 ‘Pancake’, Fuji Acros 100.

Better late than never, here is a gallery of cherry blossom photos if you’re interested. I made a conscious decision this year to try to capture the ephemeral blossoms in black and white. Not sure how successful this attempt was, but you be the judge. I was partly inspired by the B/W sakura photos of a Japanese photographer by the name of K-Funk (see the three different “sakura” galleries on this page). I did take some color photos, but decided to leave them out of the gallery (you can see one online here).

Without living here in Japan it is really hard to comprehend just how much everything revolves around the blossoms for the one or two weeks they bloom, not to mention all the predicting and tracking of the blossoms that occurs on the nightly news, numerous web sites, and several special edition magazines in the weeks leading up to the actual blossoming. Finding a Japanese person who’s apathetic toward the blossoms is about as hard as finding one who will say on record that they love the rain — in other words, good luck.

The Japanese concept of mono no aware (simplistically, the impermanence of things) is often mentioned in the context of the cherry blossoms. But some students of mine, they of an older generation, taught me a heretofore unknown adjective when they tried to explain the appeal of the blossoms: isagiyoi. The dictionaries define this as “gracious” or “sportsmanlike,” but perhaps we can say “accepting defeat gracefully.” These students couldn’t help adding that this was a word seldom used to describe today’s younger generation.

I’m not going to go into it much here and now, but 2003 was sort of a breakthrough year for me photographically. I rediscovered my film cameras (and bought some new ones), re-connected with film and black and white specifically, shot more film than perhaps the last 10 years put together, and in general feel very good about the place I’m at right now, though I still have many miles to go before I sleep.

To look back as folks are wont to do at this time of year, I’ve put together a small gallery of 25 images, all shot on black and white film, all shot within the last 4 months, and all previously unpublished online, with a couple of exceptions. Not a “best of” or highlights reel, just 25 new images to close out last year and serve as a stepping off point for 2004.

The above photo is from a new album of images I’ve just uploaded, photos that were taken in the Ikebukuro area of Tokyo over two sucessive weekends in October. (Truth be told, a few of the images have been shown before). Though I hesitate to draw any conclusions that will no doubt be betrayed by a new direction discovered oh, maybe tomorrow, I will draw your attention to the fact that all images but one feature human beings. This is not something I anticipated happening, but (for now) it’s definitely the direction things are going.

Perhaps it’s strange to remark about this at all, but just a few months ago you’d be hard-pressed to find very many people in my photos. Like I’m wont to do with a lot of things lately, I attribute this to Kaika, though to be honest I haven’t really thought about it enough to know whether in this case that’s warranted, or to fully explain how this might be so.