Weekend Video

For the return of the Weekend Video, the music video for OK Go's new single, 'White Knuckles' , directed by Trish Sie and OK Go.

Tokyo Snaps

Looking at Andy Warhol polaroids.

It should be pretty clear that I'm crazy about Tokyo. Unfortunately this last trip was nearly all work, but here a few snaps of some of the things and people who caught my eye.

Burberry baby.

Louise Bourgeois sculpture at the Mori plaza.

Yoshioka Tokujin installation at the Mori Museum. The artist uses technology to recreate natural phenomena such as the snowstorm pictured here.

Murakami dolls in the museum shop.

Mika Ninagawa books and merchandise.

The pool and whirlpool at the Grand Hyatt.

My last breakfast at the hotel.

Meet Lloyd Ziff

In what is fast becoming a "Meet the Legendary Art Directors" series, tonight we are having a book signing for Lloyd Ziff. The former art director of magazines including Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and Travel & Leisure, Ziff has always been a keen snapper and his new book "Near North" presents a collection of photographs shot in Alaska and the Yukon. Not surprisingly, Ziff brings his graphic sense to the remote and vast wilderness, along with a strong sense of the strangeness and uniqueness of the place.

The book signing is from 6 to 8 p.m..

A Few Pictures That Caught My Eye

Like any art fair, Tokyo Photo has a real mix. Many of the big international names are being shown - Eggleston, Friedlander,
Cartier-Bresson, Chris Bucklow - but what interests me are things that seem uniquely Japanese in an original way. And you have to hunt for those. Nevertheless, here are a few things that caught my eye. Above "Form #1" by Miwa Nishimura. Click on the image to see the wigs that have been digitally added to each seagull.

Below: From Sohei Nishino's ongoing series of dioramas done in cities all over the world. It's a painstaking process where he spends weeks photographing the city from many hundreds of different vantage points. Then back in the studio he begins to assemble the individual frames from the contact strips into a collage that takes several months to create. The collage is then photographed and editioned into three sizes.

London Diorama by Sohei Nishino.

Detail from the above diorama.

Two prints from Haruko Nakamura's 19 print series "The Gift from the Sea".

What's selling is sex. Misato Kuroda's series "Sawako".

And last but not least - an early Chicago picture by the master photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto.

How Cool Is This?

Yesterday, my new friend Mr. Masanori Hashimoto was kind enough to give me the latest version of the Ricoh GR Digital camera. It's a camera with a cult following based on it's lightness, speed, and quality. I've just started to try it out and it seems great, but the coolest thing of all (to me) is a function called "Skew Correct Mode". Turn it on to this mode, take a picture, and the camera looks for an object with four corners which it will then correct the perspective on. If you don't like the four corners it has selected press an arrow and it goes to the next option of a four cornered object. Select "O.K." and the camera instantaneously processes the image to crop and straighten the perspective. For a blogger like me this is heaven!

Here's an example, below. This photograph is on the wall of my hotel room. In "skew" mode it can pick out the whole triptych or just one part. I selected just the middle. Hit the button - and voila! I'm now saying the GR stands for "Gallery Robot". Very Japanese.

The straight shot.

What the camera did to the above shot in "skew" mode!

My new best friend, Masanori Hashimoto of Ricoh.

Tokyo Lecture - The Rules

As a preface to my talk at Tokyo Photo (see below) I articulated four rules that I thought were essential for any young photographer trying to survive.

Here are the rules:

1. Have talent. (Talent is not when your friends tell you they love your work, but when people who don't like you have to admit it's good.)

2. Understand how the world works. (Not just globally, but on a macro level. Understand what people need and don't need. Understand when to approach people and when not to. Develop social skills.)

3. Choose good friends. (There's nothing like an effective network.)

4. Be modern. (Don't do anything that looks like it's someone else's work. Stay on top of technology. Engage on multiple platforms.)

Tokyo Photo - The List

I have been asked by the organizers of Tokyo Photo to engage in a discussion with the famous editor and art director Masanobu Sugatsuke on the subject "How to survive as a photographer on 2010s".

As part of this, I made up a list of 10 different photographers whose careers I felt offered some guidance. Each are relatively new (or at least particularly modern and original) to the photo scene and each have developed incredibly successful careers. So for easy reference, I wanted to post a list on the blog so people could easily reference the names.

In no particular order they are:

Ryan McGinley

The Sartorialist

Massimo Vitali

Juergen Teller

Alec Soth

Richard Learoyd

Idris Khan

Tim Walker

Sze Tsung Leong

Susan Derges