Gaijin Photographers Group at Zen Foto, Shibuya, 17^th January 2010

Our second Gaijin Photographers` Group meeting was an enjoyable and fascinating evening. Thanks go both to those who showed and talked about their work, and to the participants. It was a good mix, photographers – professional and amateur, journalists and editors. Hopefully some good new connections were made as well as a chance to meet old friends. We had several rounds of good, constructive, thought-provoking discussions.

To get us under way we saw some work from Rin Yo – B/W street scenes of Tokyo from a Chinese perspective. Rin Yo is an amateur photographer and fan of Muge`s work who happened to visit the gallery during Muge`s exhibition.

Peter Cook

Peter talked about his remarkable work on the architecture of major cities – Beijing, Paris, Berlin, London, Shanghai, Tokyo – and how his treatment varies at the hands of local police and security guards when he sets up his large format camera in and around trophy buildings. Beautiful images and extremely impressive work. Must see the real prints!

Alex Treves

Alex brought a selection mainly of black and white portraits from his travels around South-East Asia and gave a memorable and well thought out commentary on his own work. To be able to do such careful analysis of one`s own work is a rare gift.

http://www.pbase.com/alexander_treves

Andy Palaski

Sorry that we could not read Andy`s CD but through his website we discussed his work on the work of Masako and Shigeru Ban and the Sumida River bridges. Andy talked about his concepts of photography and use of the 5x4 format camera. Thank you Andy and we hope to see your macro work on the next occasion.

www.andypalaski.com

Takashi Arai

Takashi introduced his daguerrotypes to us. Takashi is one of only two people doing this in Japan. First time for most of us, I suspect, to see the unique images produced by this method used at the birth of photography.

http://www.takashiarai.com/

Paulette Waltz

Paulette showed her production about Tibetans living in exile in India. A moving slide show. To get the most out of it I recommend viewing it with better sound here:

http://www.paulettewaltz.com/works/tibetans/

She also showed her engaging project “A Hundred Smiles”.

http://ahundredsmiles.com/

Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

Jeremy brought prints from his work on Rumania, Whaling, Twin Towers, Japanese CEO tea-times. It was good to see the printed work. Just scraping the surface of this man`s oeuvre. Looking forward to seeing more in future.

http://www.jeremysuttonhibbert.com/features.asp?fldfeatures=29

Paolo Patrizi

Paolo showed his award-winning work on Starlings in Rome and stark images of migrant prostitution. Thought-provoking stuff from another young veteran.

http://www.paolopatrizi.com/flash.php

We aim to hold the next meeting on March 7th

Written up by Mark Pearson、Zen Foto Gallery、Shibuya