真夏の暑さが終わりましたが、これから夏のベランダのクローズアップの写真のシリーズをお見せします。写真は全部フィルムです。小さいスペースなのに楽しいです。これは種子から育てたヨーロッパのミニヒマワリです。
This is the start of my summer balcony details series. A close look at some of the flowers, foliage and edibles of summer. First, a pot of micro-sunflowers, grown from Hiyoko’s seeds from Europe. The leaves looks so fresh.
The strawberry patch on my balcony has been a pleasure to look at and to eat. The fruits are small, and the flavor concentrated. I am also amazed by how black the dark areas are when shooting with film.
最近、たくさんフィルムの写真をとっています。マクロレンズを使うと、ベランダのジャングルで特定の要素が見えます。これは、琉球アサガオです。背景に、都庁やハイヤットやオペシティがあります。ところで、「シティ」という日本語の発音はとても変です。
Recently I am taking a lot of film photos, and recently I bought a macro lens which allows me to focus on specific elements of the jungle that my balcony is becoming. This is Okinawa morning glory, the mainstay of our green curtain.
In the background you can see the twin towers of Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Hyatt hotel from Lost in Translation, and the Opera City building. The last building always makes me laugh because the Japanese pronunciation is “opera shitty.”
毎週金曜日、東京で再稼働反対のデモがあります。このフィルムの写真は新宿の小さなデモでとりました。コズプレも音楽も、いろいろな人たちが居て楽しいです。この抗議は原発の問題がよい方向に変わるのではないかと思わせてくれます。
There are protests in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence every Friday in favor of ending nuclear power. The protests have been the largest and most sustained since the 1960s. The national government and largest corporations are eager to re-start the plants that were shut down after the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
I often join a Koenji group’s demonstrations. These photos are from a smaller march. I like the range of people, the costumes, music, and sense of fun and hope. These are all film photos.
This film photograph of the mysterious Nakano forest house looks so much different than the digital one I posted recently. I love how green and over-grown this house has become.
最初のフィルムに、一番好きな中野と新宿の庭の写真をとりました。飯島さんの花の壁はとても素敵です。Plant Journal という雑誌の記事に、インタビューをしました。訪ねたときに、飯島さんは、「今、何も咲いていません」と言っていました。フィルムなので、イメージが古く見えますね。
For my first roll of film, I took photos of my favorite gardens in Nakano and Shinjuku, plus my own balcony garden. In the foreground above is Iijima-san’s flower wall house. He has 500 hundred potted plants, mostly flowers, rising from the street to the roof. I interviewed Iijima-san for the Plant Journal article I wrote recently.
His first sentence in greeting us was, “There’s nothing blooming now.”
It’s funny how using a film camera makes the image itself look older. The texture and colors in this image seem so different than the bright and flat images I am now accustomed to seeing with digital images. In the next days, I’ll put up more images from this first roll.
My tiny point and shoot Canon S90 has provided almost all the photos on Tokyo Green Space. Inspired by seeing the revival of film cameras, and assisted by B/B who gave me advice and a tour of Nakano’s famous Fujiya used camera shop, I’ve just started taking film photographs with a super cheap Canon EOS Kiss 5 camera body and a good 50 mm lens.
I’m excited about improving my photography skills, and seeing what film can do. It’s also fun to go to film labs. I took my first roll to Horiuchi’s main office in nearby Wada. The last time I used a professional lab I was a graduate student in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the 1990s. What I like about the Wada location is that, although very close to where I live, I always get lost going there by bike.
バルセロナの「plant journal」という雑誌が東京の植木鉢の庭について記事を聞きました。浜田大輔さんはフィルム写真を撮りました。近所の庭師たちをインタビューをして、楽しかったです。
Barcelona-based Plant Journal invited me to write an article about Tokyo flower pot gardeners, and arranged for Daisuke HAMADA to take film photos of the gardens I selected in Nakano and Shinjuku. I interviewed two older gentlemen whose gardens I’ve long admired.
Hamada-san’s fantastic photos inspired me to buy a film camera, and in a few weeks I’ll start posting from my first roll. I think it’s been nearly twenty years since I had a film camera.
Tokyo Green Space 