In his text accompanying this portfolio of photographs of Tokyo, architect Arata Isozaki writes of the difficulty of deciphering this city. Paris was finally properly read, he says, by Walter Benjamin and New York by Rem Koolhaas. This was accomplished when the authors abandoned academic means and insisted upon appearances.
Isozaki finds that Benjamin, the strolling flaneur, claimed the nameless small streets, and Koolhaas asserted the role of anonymous desire (Coney Island, Radio City) and consequently deciphered their respective cities.
Tokyo has had to wait for its unraveler, but it has now found an explicator -- not a writer, but a photographer. By scrupulously insisting upon anonymous surface as revelatory, Osamu Kanemura has, believes Isozaki, shown us the city as it is.
There is no drama, no narrative, no distinction among bicycles, billboards and electric wires. The photographer seems to be trying to eliminate the meanings, relations, orders and values from every subject. Benjamin stripped Paris of all reason, Koolhaas denuded New York's desire, and here Tokyo's construction is stripped of its content.
Isozaki's metaphor is the spider's web, by definition tangled and by interpretation natural. The streets are web-like and the constant hatching of overhead wires mimics the spider's strands.
The stratagems of the city are equally "natural" but need the decoding of Kanemura's camera -- and the reference to the Bertolucci film about machinations uncovered, "The Spider's Stratagem," which was still an art-house favorite when the photographer first began displaying the geology of his city. (At that time, Kanemura was watching, by his own admission, about "600 films a year.")
Kanemura has spoken of the cliche of finding Tokyo chaotic and said that such critics had failed "to look at the complex social relations concealed within this superficial chaos." Looking at (and for) these relationships might be seen as the focus of Kanemura's photographic quest.
Examine the illustration that accompanies this review. (Plate 74 from the book.) We see no people (Kanemura's Tokyo is largely uninhabited), but we see their signs. Not only the obvious signs (shop, traffic, posters), but other indications of communication -- the etching-like cross-hatching of wires, the various hives we call buildings, the ubiquitous auto. The picture is alive with indications of complex social relationships.
But notice as well the complexities of the presentation. Like all the other photos in the portfolio, it is horizontal. Though Kanemura is examining a particularly vaunting city, with skyscrapers galore, there are no vertical pictures. Within this proscenium-like space, the photographer shows his wares. Foreground is established as dark (in all the plates) and thus highlights through contrast a middle ground that consequently seems all the more busy. This activity is halted but validated by the "backdrop," usually a yet higher hive.
Kanemura's Tokyo, like Benjamin's arcaded Paris, is a very theatrical place. There is not much narrative, but the scene is swarming with detail, all of it minutely observed. (The photographer uses a Plaubel Makino 6x7 with an 80 mm lens and I should imagine a very fine-grained black-and-white, high-contrast film.)
He has said that photographs are like parachutes: You never know where they are going to land. At the same time, the presentational process is so strong in these pictures that one feels that this parachutist landed very near where he intended.
This would be the place from where the details of implied social relationships are best viewed. Hence perhaps his calling attention to Tokyo's already cell-like proliferation, the suggestion of a somewhat biological model (all those bikes massed like T cells), the delineation of the mosaic-like construction that can make the capital seem a giant mineral deposit.
Hence all the reflections. There are bike mirrors and glass windows reflecting, polished concrete holding passing images. These are in turn reflected in the silver paper inserts that the publisher, as part of its excellent, sympathetic design, has used as facing pages to some of the images.
The photographer also thinks of himself as a reflector. "Things with nothing mental or spiritual about them somehow combine to produce meaning (when) they interact with a mere human being called 'me.' " Kanemura thus courts spontaneity.
He originally wanted to be a punk rocker, supports himself with an al fresco job delivering newspapers, and shoots fast. His diary reveals that he takes about 20 rolls an hour, using a small aperture, the distance set on infinity. "I don't even have time to focus."
True, but nevertheless it is not the representation in these pictures that counts, but the presentation. Kanemura is not only the vessel through which Tokyo flowers: He is also the discerning and selecting artist, and it is in this mixture that I think the value of this book lies.
All texts in the book are in Japanese only. It may be obtained at local bookstores (distributed by Kawadeshobo-Shinsha) or ordered by fax (03-5485-0993) or by e-mail: [email protected]
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