Mundane and Strange

"Half Awake and Half Asleep in the
Water" (2001) by Asako Narahashi

Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan
Bill Wood's Business
International Center of Photography
May 16-Sept. 7

Photography -- it's big in Japan. Seriously. Think Canon, Nikon, Minolta. The country loves to shoot. And in the last 20 years, fine-art photography has received increased attention with the opening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the first public museum there devoted to the medium.

Now, the ICP has organized a survey of 13 contemporary Japanese photographers, amazingly the first show of its kind in nearly 30 years (since the museum's last survey in 1979). Uneven but eye-opening, "Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan" illuminates aspects of Japanese culture and approaches to photography, from the traditional to the cutting-edge.

On the time-tested end of the spectrum, is the show's standout artist, Naoya Hatakeyama, whose stunning photos highlight human manipulation of nature. Reminiscent of the environmentally minded images of Edward Burtynsky, Hatakeyama's photos look at the link between the surreal landscape of a limestone quarry, the texture of Tokyo's buildings seen from above and that city's odd concrete-lined rivers.

The work of Asako Narahashi is equally preoccupied with nature, although from the other side -- namely its lethal power over us. His unique photos of the urban skyline taken from offshore and a partially submerged perspective bring to mind unsettling thoughts of a tsunami or drowning. (See image above.)

Equally disturbing are Yukio Nakagawa's photos of ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging, transform the petals and stems into menacing representations of violence and gore. Traditional or transgressive or both? A more upbeat and goofy take on organic arrangements can be seen in Tsuyoshi Ozawa's "vegetable weapons" project: photos and video that document his friends making and holding rifle-shaped constructions made of corn, peppers, cauliflower, etc. -- all which end up as a meal.

Some of the work functions like a travelogue (and a lot cheaper than a round-trip to Tokyo). Masayuki Yoshinaga documents the subcultures of "Goth-Lolis," teens who dress in outlandish hybrid of babydoll Lolita and goth black (see image at right), and bosozuku motorcycle gangs, whose embroidered robes and headbands pay homage to the samurai. And Hiroh Kikai's street portraits show a more individualistic and humanistic side, with images of a tattoo artist and his son, a dancer and a kimono-wearing man watching horse racing on a portable TV. The elegant monochromatic prints are reminiscent of both Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus.

Indebted to Cindy Sherman is Tomoko Sawada, whose post-Photoshop "School Days" series constructs a formal school portrait using herself as a model for each of the students, all eerily similar with slight variations of height, hairstyle and facial expression. (As an aside, I happened to see Sherman at the museum; she was with her beau David Byrne; but much to my regret, I didn't witness her reaction to Swada's work. Ms. Museum Hours and I imagined that Byrne would have said something like "it's another one, Cindy honey!")

Also in back-to-school fashion is Midori Komatsubara, whose "Sanctury" photos and video sketch a story of romance between classmates inspired by Japanese "boy's love" comics that are popular with young women. Komatsubara ups the sexual ambiguity by using female models for her schoolyard fantasies. The result is perplexing the viewer not familiar with the genre. In a similar vein, Makoto Aida fashions and photographs surreal hybrid sculptures of bonsai trees with the heads of doe-eyed girls. A less ambiguous exploration of gender are the gothic fairytale photos of Miwa Yanagi, which invert the outcome of classics like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, imagining the victim as victor.

Less successful are the sloppy and dull grouping of Naoki Kajitani, who takes scattershot images of seedy neighborhoods, and Risaku Suzuki, who takes sequences documenting his daily comings and goings. More perplexing is the inclusion Kenji Yanobe, whose creepy video installation — a kind children's theater about atomic disaster — opens the show.

Supplementing the show is a room with four videos, including mini documentaries on Hatakeyama and Suzuki (both produced by the Joy of Giving Foundation) alongside a captivating portrait of bosozuku motorcycle gangs and an childish animation by Yanobe.

While not quite the Telectroscope, "Heavy Water" offers a unique peek into Japan. And even if all its offerings aren't captivating, the show may leave you with a better understanding of the intriguing and sometimes bizarre push-pull between the traditional and the contemporary, both in Japan and, more generally, in photography.

For more weirdness, check out the smaller exhibition "Bill Wood's Business," which presents 210 photos taken by the Fort Worth-based commercial photographer. The show is curated by actress and photo collector Diane Keaton, who culled the images from vast archive of photos by Wood — some 20,000 large format negatives she purchased in the 1970s and has promised to the museum.

Woods is no genius, and despite the success of his photo business, few of his images stand on their own. But this isn't about beautiful compositions, but rather a host of strange and sometimes uproarious juxtapositions, simultaneously mundane and surreal.

Cleverly arranged in two dense grids, the eyes naturally jump photo to photo, taking in a surfeit of goofy and weird Mid-century Americana: a team photo of middle-aged basketball team wearing sailor outfits; a magic show at a bingo parlor; a clown cop arrests two blackface prisoners; Miss Lion Lightbulb poses in her swimsuit, holding two large bulbs; a store display of Roach Destroyer; a businessman wears a crown; Santa waves from a powerboat; a bacon billboard; dead bodies in caskets; large gears; a TV-slash-record player console; a smiling man prepares to cut a cake with an axe; a candy-striped playground in a drive-in movie theater; a lawn furniture showroom; an Indian chief in feather headdress holds bowling ball. And so much more!

History Lesson

Fazal Sheikh, "Haji Qiamuddin holding a photograph of his brother,
Asamuddin," 1998 (courtesy of the artist and Pace/MacGill)

Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
International Center of Photography
January 18 – May 4, 2008

John Milton at 400: A Life Beyond Life
New York Public Library
February 29 - June 14, 2008

Pop quiz: What possibly could a contemporary art show at the ICP have in common with an exhibit on John Milton at the New York Public Library? Their shared proximity to Bryant Park doesn't count.

Answer: history, or better yet, historiography, the study of historic methods.

The clever concept behind ICP's "Archive Fever" is contemporary art that re-frames or remixes archival images. It's also about reconsidering recent history, especially moments of war and revolution.

One example is Fazal Sheikh's simple and affecting photos ("Afghan Images," 1998), each showing an Afghani hand holding a small black and white portrait of a relative killed in combat, accompanied by text quoting memories of the deceased (see above image). Here is a history lesson: how foreign occupation and war in Afghanistan impacts families. It's also a stark reminder of how photos can be very personal, and mean different things depending on who's looking.

In a similar exercise, Lamia Joreige's "Objects of War" (1999-2006), presents video interviews with Lebanese men and women relating their experience of war. Each talks about an object -- a rosary, book, photo, etc. -- that they associate with their memory. Standing next to the three video monitors, a glass case holds dozen or so objects.

Hans-Peter Feldman's "9/12 Front Page" (2001) is four walls with 100 newspaper international front-pages from 9/12/2001, a collective global reaction of horror with only slight variations in the photos and layout.

"The Specialist: Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1999) by Eyal Simon recuts footage from the 1960 war crimes trial, juxtaposing testimony of Holocaust survivors with Nazi criminal Eichmann's cold denials.

My favorite piece is mediation on memory and history by Albanian artist Anri Sala ("Intervista," 1998), a 26-minute video that documents Sala's discovery of an old film reel showing his mother as a young woman meeting the country's communist-era leader. To better understand the footage, which has no soundtrack, has a lip-reader decipher what is being said, and interviews his mother, bringing up her ambivalent feelings about the old regime and her young idealism.

Less about a specific history, and more about the idea of history, memory and authorship is Sherrie Levine's "After Walker Evans" (1991) a series of of rephotographs of Evans' famous photos of rural American during the Depression. Levine's classic pomo jujitsu has the viewer reconsider the older images and how their meaning has shifted, taking on an almost religious aura, stripped of their original documentary power. (Have a look here.)

For a chronologically deeper slice of history, we head over to the Main Branch of the Library, lately named for a hedge fund billionaire, for a small show celebrating the quadricentennial of the birth of John Milton.

It figures that the author of "Paradise Lost," an epic poem that fleshes out the story of man's fall, telling it from Satan's point of view. A polemicist, he wrote in support of radical ideas like regicide and divorce (the former got him in hot water after Cromwell was defeated). He also met Galileo.

But the bulk of the show isn't biography, but rather how Milton and his famous book were reinterpreted and rediscovered through subsequent generations. He was embraced by the Classical period, and even more emphatically by the Romantics, notably through the visionary illustrations of William Blake. An 1804 edition is on display, although I would have like to have seen more than a single image. (There are a few more of Blake's illustrations from the 1808 edition on view here.)

We learn that Milton's proponents include this crazy group: Darwin, Malcolm X and Helen Keller. Among his detractors are T.S. Elliot and Virginia Woolf.

Amusingly the show has a soundtrack -- music inspired by "Paradise Lost." It's mostly Handel and the like, but every 10 minutes or so there's a jarring blast of heavy metal courtesy of Cradle of Filth. I was waiting for one of the geriatric visitors to freak, but alas everyone was blasé.