Seen: KUMOGAKURE Onsen: Reclusive Travels / 雲隠れ温泉行 Who: Masakazu Murakami Where: Guardian Garden, Ginza (map) When: Aug. 31 -…
Seen: KUMOGAKURE Onsen: Reclusive Travels / 雲隠れ温泉行
Who: Masakazu Murakami
Where: Guardian Garden, Ginza (map)
When: Aug. 31 - Sept. 17, 2015 (open 11am - 7pm)
There was a time in my late 20’s when I wanted to disappear from the plane of worldly affairs. Kumogakure has no direct English translation. It means to be hidden by clouds, shrouded, invisible. No longer able to endure my world and the affairs that surrounded it, I spent two years wandering blindly through fog-draped Hokkaido and Tohoku.
So begins the essay by the photographer at the end of his latest photobook, Kumogakura Onsen: Reclusive Travels(Roshin Books, 2015) of which the work in this show is from. With a variety of print sizes- even contact sheets- on the walls, visiting this exhibition is an intensely enjoyable experience.
This series was first published as the winner of the Visual Arts Photobook Award in 2007- in the text for that book Murakami gave a more detailed explanation of his mindset at this time:
At the end of my twenties, having come down with a sort of measles of the mind, I was at a loss for what to do about my life and my photography. I moved about, in various parts of Hokkaido and the Tohoku region, living here and there for about two years in a way that was something like an escape from reality. That period, while I smoldered out in the sticks, idling away my time, served only to mount my sense of restlessness. I sold off all of my camera and photography equipment, wiling away the hours by reading.
Then, perhaps as some meager entertainment to break the daily monotony, I began to venture out on holidays to hots springs in places I had never been to. I would take a bath then return home, a hobby more befitting for an of man. Perhaps I was drawn to that slightly unreal scent of the co-existence between pleasure and death. I sat deep in the tub, letting my thoughts of this and that rise and disappear and mingle with the amorphous clouds of steam, just absentmindedly following the white vapor with my eyes along with a sense of resignation, thinking seriously how much easier it would be if I could just go ahead and die right there.
On one of these excursions, I happened to stop by a certain rustic hot spring spa. Along the passage to the outdoor bath was a place gouged out to reveal the rock beneath, with steam billowing out as though a bomb had just been dropped. That very moment, I felt a sudden sensation similar to a bolt of lightning strike me. I remember taking out the compact camera that I had kept (for souvenir pictures) which I hadn’t let go, and I began to furiously shoot the white smoke. At that time I didn’t know what exactly that impulse was, but it was at that moment when some of the lumps of blackened stones that had settled inside me finally took on a certain sense of direction.
I procured a full set of film development tanks and reels and chemicals and began right away. No one noticed while I worked long hours with absurd methods; like a prisoner planning his breakout from a cage, I needed to construct a bomb that would blow me thorough my mental walls. Looking at a map, I could see that hot springs could be found all over Japan.
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This is photography.
Murakami’s pictures were made when a camera is seen as a camera and not simply a tool by which “technique” is bluntly applied to match a pre-imagined vision with. Murakami’s Contax T3 and roll after roll of Kodak & Ilford 3200 film were elements he incorporated into the act of living; elements which informed and expressed his understanding of this time and place in his life.
Photography is this.
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This personal, intuitive approach to working is certainly due to the influence of his mentor, Daido Moriyama. (Indeed, Moriyama was at his wedding, to the delight of the groom and a hall full of other photographers.) But while obvious technical similarities exist, Murakami’s work is purely his own and likewise stands on its own compared to anything you might want to compare it with. Within the images one can find blips of homage and influence- ravens and bullet holes evoke Fukase and Tomatsu- but in the end these pictures are purely his, reflecting his view and his feelings.
Roshin’s new edition of KUMOGAKURE Onsen is exquisitely made, with richly toned images that expertly transmit the feel of the grainy vapor which Murakami passed through during his travels. (Disclosure: I was given the opportunity to translate the essay at the end of the book) You can order your copy here- this book be a fine addition to a Japanese-photo-bookshelf.