“Life In Philly”
Photographs
by Mao Ishikawa
Book
published by Tokio Out of
Place and Zen Foto Gallery
Price
Y2,500 in
To
order please mail: amanda@zen-foto.jp
日本語：http://www.outofplace.jp/G.OoP/Photobook%20Life%20in%20Philly.html
Mao
Ishikawa studied with Shomei Tomatsu
in
Text by Shomei Tomatsu:
The
photographs of the “The Kin-Town Women” and the uncompromising life of the
photographer who took them, a young lady who goes by the pen name of Ishikawa
Mao, brings to mind a well-known Japanese proverb, “the mummy-snatcher becomes
a mummy”. Originally referring to the mummified remains of grave robbers in the
desert who died of thirst while searching in vain for buried Egyptian mummies
so that they could steal and sell the priceless myrrh used to embalm them, the
proverb is sometimes used to allude to an outside observer whose obsession with
a subject causes him or her to become identified and inseparably at one with
the subject.
Why
I am reminded of this proverb can be readily understood when one learns that in
order to take pictures of the Kin-Town women, Mao herself also became a
Kin-Town woman. The Kin-Town women are the women who “befriend” the soldiers at
the
I
do not know precisely what Mao’s motive was for becoming a Kin-Town woman
because I haven’t heard the story from her personally, but she once confessed
that “I can’t separate myself from the photographs. The photographs are my
reason for living, my passion”. This powerful drive probably explains why she
had no hesitation in delving into the dark reaches of Kin-Town and becoming a
Kin-Town woman herself in order that she could photograph them.
This
type of approach to the photographic subject of choice is a not particularly new
one. One might even say that it is quite an orthodox approach, the
investigative approach taken by, say, novelists in
order to find material for their novels, or newspaper reporters looking for
stories. However, the problem with this type of in-depth, “live” coverage is
that one often has to put one’s life on the line, exposing oneself to all the
accompanying dangers. There are many who went to where the action is in search
of a story and never made it back. The mummy-snatchers ended up as mummies themselves.
Unfortunately,
recently there has been a lamentable tendency to take the easy way out try and
get away without going on this quest for buried mummies. Most novels which
simply rely on hearsay or artful rhetoric are not that exciting. Newspaper stories
written without doing the necessary legwork lack a certain punch. This smacks
of, to put it bluntly, indolence on the part of those who make a living out of
the written word, and explains why those reporters who trust their own
instincts and abilities and put their entire souls into writing their hearts
out about subjects dear to them garner such attention. The writing of these
lone wolves, known as the “New Journalism”, has a high intensity to it. That
may be because one can only see things as they truly are when one is in the
thick of the action, so thoroughly involved with the subject that one is in
danger of ending up as a mummy too!...
Unlike
writing, photographs cannot capture what other people see and hear. Memories
and mental images do not make for photographs. Photographers are destined never
to be able to escape from the immediacy of their subject. One might even say
that photographers always harbour the danger of
becoming one with their subject, of becoming “mummified”. But they rarely do.
That’s because there is a surprisingly large number of photographers who keep
aloof from the subject in front of them. They are prisoners of the illusion of
objectivity who make it a point of pride to not get intimately involved with
the subject.
So
what about Mao? Well, it’s hardly necessary to point out that as a photographer
she lives at the polar opposite of the illusion of objectivity. Mao’s
photography does not give a hoot for photography as a systematic structure.
Rather, she views the whole world by becoming a totally committed part of it.
She is a photographer, and also a Kin-Town woman. The distance between her and
the subject, and her relationship with it, are completely different from that
of the run-of-the-mill photographer.
Mao’s
work is the “New Journalism” of photography. This description may sound
abstruse, but her photographs, as seeing them reveals,
are completely honest. Because she makes such an orthodox, full-frontal assault
on the subject one is tempted to wonder whether there is something going on
behind the apparently stark nature of what one sees. But Mao is a million miles
away from convoluted arguments about photographic theory. She just gets on with
it in the way that everybody just gets on with it. She knows what she is looking
for, and she moves freely through her subject, rejecting any hint of being
fettered. She lives life to the full and takes photographs as she pleases.
That’s Mao for you. So there’s no way that photographs taken in this vein could
be abstruse. Her photographs are all WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”).
She patiently, and in a relaxed, uncomplicated manner allows her camera to
adjust to the daily life around her, and takes her photographs with a rhythm as
natural as that of breathing.
Mao
plays a paean to life on the musical instrument that is her camera…
Shōmei Tōmatsu
(the
above review has been extracted from Shomei Tomatsu`s afterword to “Atsuki-hibi in Camp Hansen”, the now rare photographic
collection published jointly by Ishikawa Mao and Higa
Toyomitsu in 1982).
[Translated
from the original Japanese by Timothy Marrable]
Reviews:
Eyecurious: http://www.eyecurious.com/mao-ishikawa/
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