BOOK - INTRODUCTION

PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS 1986

Curtis, while you were taking photographs of me, I felt completely at ease. This is very unusual for me, as like most Japanese, I'm a very shy person. Yet, I was able to stand in front of your camera. I don't know how to express this feeling, but somehow I felt a great gentleness. What's more, your photographs are very natural.

I hope I'm not being rude when I say that I think the mechanics of the camera and even the act of taking photographs is nothing very special for you. To you it must be the same as eating ice-cream, having a beer in a bar or riding a motor bike, as your photographing is probably become a naturally integrated part of your life cycle. If this is so, it is a wonderful thing. I would like to write my stories in the same spirit in which you take photographs, however it is sometimes very difficult for me to do so. Of course, nobody wishes to manifest suffering, nobody wishes to see others suffer and nobody lives to suffer. Simple though as this is, few Japanese are good at doing this.

Between 1980 and 1983, I traveled often between New York City and Tokyo and I had the opportunity of meeting allot of different people. Among them was a photographer by the name of Curtis Knapp whose photos I had seen in a now defunct monthly newspaper, "Soho News". At the time I was a keen collector of favorite and interesting photos which I found in magazines and newspapers and would make scrap books of my finds. I felt that such visual experiences were the most effective way for me to feel and understand the atmosphere of the latest of New York City.

Of the visual media, it was photographs which influenced and attracted me most. More than painting, more than the cinema, the deep and strong impact of the photographs offered me much more.

It was only recently that I found some of Curtis's photographs among my scrap books collections. I happened to meet Curtis again in Harajuku Street and learned that he had moved to Japan and is now living in Tokyo. I occasionally run into people whom I knew in New York City but for some reason such meetings cause me a little embarrassment. It is difficult to explain this feeling. Tokyo and New York are so close and yet so far away. Everything in the two cities is so different. I am unable to pinpoint these differences one by one, but if I may be allowed to express it in crude and abstract terms, then you could say the two cities have a different air.

When I met Curtis again, I could feel the New York vibrations streaming from his whole body. His charm is quite obvious to those who have experienced living in New York.

As my partner took over all my business matters when I started my work in New York, I was able to concentrate all my energy on my art without any big distractions. Now that Curtis has moved his work base to Tokyo, it could be said we are in the same position but in reverse, although I do worry that there is for him a situation gap. From Tokyo to New York and New York to Tokyo, anyhow the differences are great.

Curtis has been photographing portraits. It must be difficult to get close up to the people and to encapture them in a photograph. They are, at any rate, live sessions. From the first to the last, his style is very New York. Some of his subjects are able to react to him naturally but there must be others who feel bewilderment. Sometimes even Curtis himself must feel bewildered by the situation.

He faces his subjects in a lively yet light manner, popping jokes and streaming out his vibrations. It is because of this that I feel it is not only the Subject's personality but Curtis's too which encaptured in these photographs. It is my belief that original portraits should be made this way.