Jim O’Connell Photographs, The Blog.

In my neighborhood is an unlikely little café, far nicer than you’d expect to find in a little shitamachi neighborhood like mine on the north end of Ueno park. It’s a stylish little place, in the shell of an old shop that once made electrical fittings, one of the many places that does Japan’s small manufacturing. In making the café, they preserved a lot of the original—the ceilings are darkened wood rafters and the bookshelves that line one wall are stained to match, but the overall ambience of the place is clean and light and airy. It’s a lovely little place. An iPod plays jazz through a small stereo and the customers, mostly local women, meet throughout the day. If you happen to be in Iriya, you might want to stop by: Iriya Plus Café.

So that’s where I am right now, wondering what I should be doing with my photography. You see, I’m in the middle of a dry spell. I simply have no idea what to shoot and the photos I do take these days aren’t inspiring me. It’s a terrible feeling, to sit in my studio, surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of great cameras and lights and backdrops and not have any desire to make pictures.

It’s not just the prospect of making pictures that fills me with dread—I’ve been having a hard time looking at photos as well. Images that used to stir my senses now seen flat and grey, lifeless and two-dimensional. Not even the pictures of Cartier-Bresson or Willy Ronis, my two old standbys, get me excited any more. I’m just not seeing what I used to see.

It’s not even a matter of getting out to new places—yesterday, Ben and I got up at a bit after four in the morning to catch the first train to the fish market at Tsukiji, to shoot a few rolls of film. In total, I shot three rolls, but didn’t feel much. I’m in no hurry to develop them.

The problem is, if you can’t feel your subject, you don’t really see it. If you can’t see it, you can’t take a photo worth a damn, at least not in the sense that you made the photo and it’s a part of your life. You see, there’s a mental state you enter when you’re shooting worthwhile photos: some describe the feeling as being “in the zone” where you have an awareness that transcends the usual. Though your eye is at the viewfinder, you are aware of things outside the frame and the whole scene takes on a very three-dimensional feeling, as though you are seeing the whole situation from above and slightly behind yourself and the subjects are at once both composed for your frame and carefully-choreographed like actors on a stage. It’s a wonderful feeling—energetic, creative, productive. It’s the feeling of being smiled upon by the muse. I wrote about the muse a while back in a discussion about The Shot That Got Away:

There’s so much more to a good picture than a good subject in an interesting circumstance that it’s not worth worrying about missing what they call here in Japan a “Shutter Chance - シャッターチャンス”. (A term that always make me cringe.)

Adolph Hitler could ride by on a unicycle, naked but for a sombrero, but if you’re not in the right place, with the right light, an interesting angle and no unfortunate distracting elements, it’s likely to be a crap shot.

To make a strong, significant photo, you’re at the mercy of your muse.

If you’ve treated her well, respected and fascinated her with your ideas and vision, you’ll be rewarded with shots that are simply magical.

It won’t be a matter of “getting” or “not getting” an opportunistic shot, it will be a case of everything falling into place, just as the heavens open up and a beam of perfect light streams down.

Muses are fickle creatures though—they’ll abandon you at the drop of a hat, or come rushing back when you least expect. It’s a roller coaster that, while it often lifts you to dizzying, spectacular heights, ultimately leaves you standing weak and nauseous on the sidewalk.

Of course, the idea of a “muse” is mythological, but it’s a mythology that has persisted for thousands of years and like most persistent mythologies, it’s workable in practice, even though it’s got no basis in science as we understand it.

If you want to take fascinating pictures, be a fascinating person. Do interesting things and you will make interesting photos. Take honest photos and people will connect with them. Fortes fortuna adiuvat, after all.

(Oh—Take your camera out of your bag and have it ready, or leave the damn thing home.

Having a camera in the bottom of your bag is insulting to your muse and she will punish you with disappointment.

It’s like dragging your girlfriend around for an afternoon and ignoring her the whole time. It’s not going to go over well.)

I suspect I wrote that at a point in my life when I was actually shooting well; I don’t remember just now.

The real trouble is, this funk feeds upon itself: the longer you go without getting a picture that blows your hair back, the harder it is to get one.

I need to do something quick, or I might as well hang up my cameras and do something else.

Yesterday was an interesting day, but not photographically, really, which was a bit of a nice change. After going to shoot the fish market, we walked to nearby Ginza to shoot some more, since the early morning light was nice. There were schoolgirls on every corner selling red feathers for charity. We bought a couple, much to their giggling amusement. I would have had just as nice a time if I’d left my camera at home, though. When we did return home, I gave my bicycle some much-needed attention, truing the wheels, adjusting the gears and brakes and oiling up the parts that had gotten rusty. It felt good. It felt familiar, with a bit of nostalgia for my days as a bike messenger, tewnty-two years ago. I gave half a thought to applying to a messenger company again, but I suspect my stamina isn’t what it once was, when I was a kid of twenty, happy to ride through any sort of weather, for the sheer joy of being fast and invincible and immortal. After more than my share of accidents, I wised up, when after a particularly severe concussion, the doctor in the emergency room told me I wouldn’t survive another hit like the one I’d gotten. Still, on a cool October morning, there’s nothing like tuning up a bike till it runs like new, even at the expense of a couple of skinned knuckles.

So I don’t know if I’ll be posting many pictures for a while. As is always the case, the muse may ring up for a midnight booty call, or perhaps a quickie in the back alleys of Shinjuku—stranger things have happened, after all.

Wish me luck…

Click the photo for a slideshow.

The Dojunkai Apartments : The
Beginning of Apartment Living
The current mainstream steel reinforced
concrete apartments that were built prior to
World War II are called Dojunkai apartments.
The Dojunkai was a foundation established
following the Great Kanto Earthquake to help
victims in need of shelter. It was an external
body of the Interior Ministry and was funded
by contributions from within Japan and
overseas. The Dojunkai supplied 12,000
housing units, including 2,500 apartments,
between 1926 and 1941. All of the
apartments were reinforced concrete structures
that placed a premium on earthquake
resistance and most of the properties were
three stories in height. In addition to having
proper electricity, plumbing and gas, each of
the units was equipped with flush toilets. At
the time they were built, these housing units
were well known and admired for their
leading-edge conveniences and technologies
such as elevators, steam heaters, telephones
and baths. The aforementioned comforts
proved to be very popular despite the
concern that the apartment style of housing
might not be well accepted as a part of
Japanese lifestyle.

Quoted from http://xrl.us/oq6bk

On Friday, a group of us went down to Yasukuni shrine for the anniversary of the end of WWII to shoot some pictures.

I’ve been down there a lot, as I used to live nearby in Kagurazaka and once or twice before on the August 15th anniversary.

This time, I wanted to shoot with more purpose than I had before, taking better pictures.
I got there early, around 8:30, which, as it turns out, was a bit too late to see former prime minister Koizumi paying his respects. I ran into a few photographers I knew or that I’d seen around. Bruce Meyer was there, Gon-chan (a tabloid photog I know from Kabukicho,) and a few others who looked familiar.
Since Yasukuni is such a controversial place, you get all sorts of people there, ranging from families honoring fallen relatives, old soldiers, right-wingers and then a strange sub-group I call the CosPlayers. CosPlay is what Japanese call Costume Play and most often manifests itself when fans will dress up as their favorite characters from comic books or animated cartoons. The Yasukuni CosPlayers, however, dress up as soldiers, mostly from the second world war, but there’s one old duffer who wears a white beard and a getup from the late 1800’s. They get a lot of attention, of course, as they strut around saluting for the cameras, before making a grand entrance up the walkway to the temple. You’ll see their photos along with any international news story on Yasukuni, which I think is a bit of a shame. Often you’ll hear them described as old soldiers donning their uniforms, but that’s not the case, as most of them are under sixty, some in their 30’s and 40’s.

Other times, you’ll hear them described as Right-Wingers, but though their personal beliefs might be on the right, they’re not a part of the established right-wing groups. (I could be wrong on that point, but though they sat in the same area with the right-wingers, they didn’t seem to be connected in any formal way.)

The true right-wing groups are known as the Uyoku Dantai. They do dress in uniforms, but para-military at best, not WWII surplus. Typically they wear blue worker’s outfits with the name of their organization on the left breast of their shirt or jumpsuit. Other adornments include embroidered patches such as the Japanese flag. Headbands are sometimes worn, as well, typically with the Japanese flag.

There are many Uyoku Dantai groups, some with close ties to the Yakuza. The largest, the Dai Nippon Seinen Sha, (大日本青年社, or “Japan Youth Party”) was founded by a branch of the noted crime syndicate, Sumiyoshi-ikka. (Sumiyoshi family.)
Wikipedia has a good article on the different groups.

These were the groups I was most interested in shooting.

Adrian had gotten some good pictures of them last year, so I decided to see what it was all about. What happened was a revelation to me. It seems that the whole protest is carefully-choreographed, with well-understood boundaries. Police wear riot gear and protestors make as much noise as possible. There’s some shoving, but no fists thrown. The police have their riot shields, but there are no batons out. Likewise, the Uyoku don’t try very hard to cross the barriers, content to put on a nice display of Aggressive Non-Violence.

Take a look at the slideshow.