Near DEATH Experience + COMPLETE MEMORY LOSS = New Photo Perspective // Nakahira Takuma

to be honest what I want is to live as radically as possible radically means extremely but it also means fundamentally I'm fundamentally talking about always leaning forward moving

forward and changing while carrying the weight of my entire history with me I'm not talking about what I will specifically do as a result what this photographer did was to use everything

in his power to push the photo photographic medium forward through the creation of photographic collectives theories manifestos lengthy critiques

and experiments with printing images in a variety of forms from the mid 1960s through 2010 his groundbreaking work bir completely new styles of Photography

that he would literally burn to the ground as a rejection of all he had made this is Street smarts volume 30 takuma

nakahira this video is brought to you by the hanser film emulation now as a result of this project I can feel that things that I say and the things that I do are

beginning to agree with one another for the first time one element of Photography is that it's often regarded as having the ability to make a moment permanent circulation is a project from nakahiro that played with the idea that

maybe it didn't have to this project from 1971 was created by nakahira in Paris as a living work of art at the Bal de per this Festival was used to promote

alternative methods of creating art outside of the establishment and the use of non-standard practices the methods that nakahira used for this part of the festival to create the fully titled

circulation date Place events consisted of taking images and printing them during each new day to put on display while discarding and removing the previous day's work this was done to

create images that he considered to have been created live he used the term circulation as a title to convey how he was circulating around Paris to create the work how these images circulated in

and out of the dark room before being presented to viewers and how those viewers circulated by the images while walking past them since they were presented in an open air exhibition

according to nakahira to put it concretely I set myself to photograph develop and exhibit nothing but the Paris that I'm living and experiencing

my project was born from the this motivation every day I would go out into the streets of Paris from my hotel I would watch television read newspapers and magazines watch the people passing

by look at other artists work at the bonal venue and watch the people there looking at these works I would capture all these things on film develop them the same day make enlargements and put

them up for display that evening often with the photographic prints still wet from the washing process it's daunting to think about how much work went into this project especially when you can consider that Beyond walking around and

taking these photos each day he posted and presented them each night and he apparently printed around 200 images on each of these consecutive days which eventually totaled in over 1,500 photos

these images consisted of a myriad of subjects that are very familiar to any Street photographer presented in a way that nakahira considered necessary because it drew attention to individual

photos he pushed away from the idea of calculated and curated arrangement of photos and felt that it was better to put an emphasis and attention on individual images by arranging them in a way that was counter to how typical

photo books are laid out in a methodical and often narrative fashion that flows from image to image in a practical way additionally these images stand out because they brought the dark room

process out of its careful clean and delicate environment into the outside world in a way that hadn't been seen before that worked as a live draft of what would later become a greater body

of work hilarity Terror alienation ooze hyper reality are the words Department of Photography chair at the Art Institute of Chicago Matthew W wowski used to describe how nakah Hero's photos

were overall a commentary on the stability Authority and ego that he saw around him in Paris nagira used the words holess and despair to describe what he saw because he felt a lack of

satisfaction when he considered where Contemporary Art was in terms of what others and himself were creating he felt an irony in the fact that that much of the art on display attacked this current

state of affairs while only being able to exist within it and because of it through the capital and materials that made it possible making the individual artists irrelevant as a result because

they couldn't create art without that capital or material creating circulation date Place events was as far as he could go to create something that worked in opposition of this while he still fully

understood that there was no way to truly break away from the Hess and despair that he was alluding to what separated him from the other artists at the event is that his art truly lived

and died there in terms of the physical media unlike others none of his art was created beforehand and for the most part it didn't exist afterwards not in terms of the negatives but as far as the

prince made then and there are concerned however as part of his exhibition nakahira included the words Viva la morte or Long Live death which perfectly encapsulates this project that continues

to live on in its thought-provoking nature even if if it physically died on the grounds it was created upon this video is brought to you by dehancer film emulation a plugin to help

photographers and videographers achieve the look of film through digital means within the following software for more information on how dehancer can help you achieve the look of film on your frames

by adding authentic and tested looks compression grain Hol Bloom and more check the link in the description born in Tokyo 1938 after graduating with a degree in Foreign

Studies and working at the editorial Department of a leftist magazine nakahira became interested in photography after an introduction to a photographer named sh

tomatsu sh pushed him to create his own photographic work and at age 27 he left the magazine job behind to focus entirely on a career in photography and

becoming an art critic one year later in 1966 he opened an office with da morama shortly thereafter he began to publish provoke magazine continuing the spirit

of Revolution that he had chased after with his foreign studies degree provoke involved koii utaka takachi takahiko Oka and Dao morama this group radically

changed the face of Japanese Photography in the postwar era through his photography and work he created alongside da morama the AR B Boke style associated with provoke was born his

unique voice came through in photography and writing that focused on theoretical looks at creat images this made him stand out in the art world of the late 1960s and later becoming a voice that

has been seen as influential in developing higher Concepts in photography after being mentored by Japanese photography Legend sh tomasu early on nakahira later came to see him

as a photographic enemy believing he wasn't moving far enough away from the photography movements nagira would begin to reject he worked on the 1968 exhibition of A Century of Japanese

photography alongside another photographer named kiaki both photographers graduated from Tokyo University and used this exhibition as a launching point to consider how to

interact with Photography in new ways the exhibition was an exploration of the previous 100 Years of Japanese Photography in cating it gave these young photographers significant

knowledge about what had come before their time working with the medium this provoked them to change the established language of Photography and take it in more experimental

directions prior to this exhibition nakahira focused much more of his artistic energy on poetry But A Century of Japanese photography along with a push from

tomatsu made him lean into transferring much more of that energy into photography alone nakahara's love for the written word also helps explain why there's such a heavy emphasis on writing

in the provoked scenes which was uncommon for printed photography material at the time do Mor claims that takuma nakahira was then and still is my

only friend and my only rival and one of the biggest Parts nagahiro played in the publication of provoke magazine was to bring the group members together through his connections with Koji Takaki and

through the invitations he extended to takanashi and later morama to join the group morama and nakahira work together to develop the Ari B Boke style that is

now synonymous with provoke Ari B Boke meaning greeny blurry and out of focus this was intended to be an insult of their work that they ended up using to their advantage they believed that this

style was a trer form of how we perceive the world given that our memories of day-to-day experiences are never as crystal clear as any produced through the documentary style of straight

photography both photographers also work together to regularly publish work in a monthly magazine alongside a series of photo essays from the poet and playwright terama suji a man who was

heavily involved in many aspects of counterculture and art that came out of the postwar era provoke only lasted for three printed scenes over the span of a few years after the group disbanded

nakahira felt that the arur bokeh style began to become accepted and less Innovative than it once was so he moved on to other types of Photography and expanded ideas on the medium that he

would explore throughout the rest of his life why an illustrated Botanical dictionary is a writing from nakahira which was not appreciated to the extent it is today when it was first released

in 1973 this writing questions realism in photography what that truly means and is seen as a definitive piece associated with the move towards postmodernism in

Japanese photography and art it is given the title because of his Newfound appreciation for photographs with sharp color contrast that he felt were similar to the illustrations found in Botanical

dictionaries this move into photography that emphasized color was a move away from r B bokeh even though he was instrumental in creating that style he wanted to distance himself from it going

as far as to burn his work that he created in that form once Ari B bokeh became popularized so much that it was even used in commercial photography this time in his life drove him further away

from photography itself and deeper into writing and critical analysis of the medium he would continue to push his views on photography throughout his career in the late 1970s he lost his

memory along with the majority of his speaking and writing abil I After experiencing acute alcohol intoxication which pushed him to the brink of death and took him a long amount of time to recover from

reflecting on this point in his life nakahira stated indeed my body itself was completely restored but on the other hand I am unable to remember almost

anything and continue to live in a state of considerable mental anxiety first of all I was unable to comprehend my son's birthday so in August 1978 I went to

okona with my son and took many photos of okan people I dared to publish a closeup of my son along with a beautiful scenery of okanawa in the magazine aahi camera

naturally my work was completely rejected in the next issue of the magazine however because of this I was barely able to comprehend the very existence of my son it is true that I'm

finally able to write what I need to but above all else I continue to cling to the idea that I a photographer it is completely impossible for me to abandon that one point for this very reason I

have come to believe that the very starting point of the life I began to live is the point at which I am a photographer for this very reason I must create my work in an absolutely perfect

way a new gaze released in 1983 was a book he created to reflect on this period of his life from then on he would create multiple books that reflected on photographic theories this one in

particular focused on the language of Photography and how it related to the verbal and written languages he was rediscovering as he was also rediscovering his photographic abilities which had become

a source of his drive and ability to rehabilitate from a near-death experience all of this work centers around mindful photography practices in

Yokohama of streets fields and Riverside scenery and works as a rejection of RA Barry Boke nakahiro would continue to create books centered around photography

theories until 2010 he passed away not long afterwards in 2015 one of his later Publications was titled degree zero which included photos that had been believed to have been destroyed by

nakahira much earlier on when he rejected Ari B bokeh mixed with later work that highlight the changes his photography went through throughout the course of his life now I want to share a summary of

one of the writings that came from nakahira that show a deeper look at how he perceived photography during the provoke era since his thoughts on the topic played as much of a role in his work if not more so

than the photography itself that he created this work is titled can photography revive language in this writing not Hera delves into what might seem like obvious statements today but

were very thought-provoking at the time and push the vernacular of what we use to speak about art closer towards postmodernism in terms of essentially understanding that art is basically

having a meta narrative with everything we create rather than forming a new narrative itself with the provoked scene what have nak Ambitions was to use the AR B Boke style to reform how we

interact with photography into a completely new language but upon later reflection he came to realize that the attempt to do so was a complete failure and only ended up proving that this

cannot be done because our interaction with written and spoken languages inhibit us from being able to separate what we photograph from the words that we attach to those same things in this

writing nakir reflects upon this stating at one time it was declared that images had an independent meaning in themselves opposed to language and a language of

images was spoken about as though it were real yet these Notions are surely mistaken images haunt language like a shadow they line language and give it

substance and in some cases they bring about an expansion of language he goes on to explore how language itself is constructed and how independent words in a dictionary help us understand the

words that language is built upon but a dictionary as a collective work offers no feeling of warmth or deep Connection in its rigid organization and stale lifelessness it is only through our

lived experiences that words truly gain power and meaning to the extent that it cannot live without people language consists of mere symbols that vaguely indicate that a tree is a tree only

through human use can a language be given life thus the words in a dictionary which are extracted from Mere relational Concepts are things that transform themselves into what Roland

bar calls exploding words and a vertical rising up of language nakir then goes on to explore that language in this sense varies from person to person in their

own individual experience with specific words in that sense images of anything words are attached to cannot be separated from the feelings any one person Associates with those words so

photography cannot exist as a Revival of language or as a language in itself thus no matter how much an image does not resemble reality the relation with it is

always narrowly retained a tree is a tree nakahira goes on to come to terms with the fact that the new language he was searching for can do nothing more but amplify the meaning of words that

are associated with each and everything that could ever possibly be photographed it seems provoke has carried out one of its missions provoke has reversed the

image as a self-evident and pointless proof that a tree is is a tree and on the contrary has presented images that raise uncertainty about the fixed

meanings of ver similitude albeit rather slowly yet even this has fallen into a kind of minor fashion Now by fashion here I do not mean merely that it has

become customary but rather I'm referring to the bodies and minds of each one of us who have become satisfied with this extremely grainy images and

intentionally unfocused photographs in particular have already become mere decoration nakahira has plenty of other writings that explore his ideas on photography to a much deeper extent but

at this time I've only been able to come across books that are either in Japanese with no English translation available or ones that are widely out of my price range what we can learn from this small sample size of his work is that it's

worth taking a deeper look at our own work to consider what we're photographing and why myself included there's a drive for each of us to create art but very often I think there's so little reflection on the work we're

creating or any deeper meaning Beyond something that looks nice much of this stems from the necessity to publish or perish online by the requirement to post so often that there's no real time to

reflect but I believe that the next true phase in photography will come from deeper reflection and conversations around Photography in general my goal with this channel is to help to be the change I want to see in the world of

Photography and to put down the arguments about gear brands focal lengths and base level techniques in a way that opens up the floor for discussions that broaden up our

Collective Horizons to what photography is what it means and what it could be as I take steps myself and becoming less ignorant on all of these things I'd love to engage with deeper thoughts you've

been having on photography in the comments thanks to dehancer for sponsoring this video if you want to know more about how you can use their plugin to get the look of film on your photo and video check the link in the

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