Provincial Japan by Guido Castagnoli

I immediately fell for this series of large format shots of a small Japanese town in Shizuoka prefecture. Nostalgia drips from these shots because they could have easily been taken in the small Japanese town I lived in for a year in Kyushu. I hope to do a similar project like this someday, not merely to document provincial Japanese life, but to show a side of a Japan most of the world doesn't know exists.

Ghada Amer

And the Beast, 2004

I saw some work of Ghada Amer in the Brooklyn museum back in the summer. I love how she subtly masks the erotica behind a pastiche of colors and lines.

Masao Yamamoto, KAWA=flow

from Kawa series

"I'm an animal, trapped in your hot car,
I'm all the days you choose to ignore"

She's gone, I'm trying to let it flow...

SANNE SANNES (1937-1967)

Dutch Sannes explores aspects of sexual passion. He made explorations of people, of their outsides and their insides, and sent back picture postcards of their psyches.

ARAKI--Bokuju Kitan / Marvellous Tales of Black Ink

Kinbaku, meaning bondage, is the signature motif of this specific body of work, Bokuju Kitan / Marvellous Tales of Black Ink. Traditionally used in pornographic works, bondage is rarely associated with artistic motivation. However, since 1979, Araki has depicted the theme through a creative lens. The paradox is that by restricting the female body Araki is liberating an expression. Or in his words, “I free their souls by tying up their bodies.”

girls can see better than boys

Proof that girl photographers see things I could never see. I'm so jealous of their eyes.

Haile Marie

kyrgyzstan

from my friend nic.

Hiraki Sawa

The video's grainy black-and-white footage and the monotonous roar of jet engines underscore the tense restlessness of living in exile and the melancholy of being out of place in one's own home.

Ambiguous Desires

Evgeny Mokhorev . Untitled (038), 2007, part of Ambiguous Desires

"Ambiguous Desires" considers an age of discovering one's sensuality, a mysterious metamorphosis from childhood into adolescence. Known for its social crises and emotional tempests, it is also a period when the tacit becomes explicit, when what is recognized becomes understood. Mokhorev possesses a special portal allowing him to enter the complex universe of pubescent youth, and to capture the wonder of innocence and unfamiliar longings expressed by his models. The growth of human understanding and sexual awareness in a teenager is one of the most intricate, amazing, and beautiful phenomena in nature.

Provoking Change in Japanese Postwar Photography

This is the best news I've received so far this month! At Carolyn Anitsch Gallery in Chelsea, an exhibition of post-war Japanese photography books. Eikoh Hosoe, Daido, Araki, et al--these guys are my favor photographers, ever.

Takuma Nakahira For a Language to Come, 1970

Nobuyoshi Araki Sentimental Journey, 1971

Shomei Tomatsu's Oo! Shinjuku, 1969

photography as an important visual catalyst of sexuality

Nobuyoshi Araki, Untitled, 1993

Christer Strömholm, Place Blanche, 1960's

"Photography shows and stylizes lust and passion, fantasy and desire, power and violence, voyeurism and self-presentation in sexuality. Fantasy and desire form a thrilling pact with photography: sexual fantasies demand representation; they seek to be revealed—and photography, with its voyeuristic streak, makes use of the power of (pictorial) eroticism for its own ends, in order to gain power and be seductive."
from FOTOMUSEUM WINTERTHUR.

Icarus

Kwang-Young Chun

Why Icarus? Why it's my favorite song on the Santogold Diplo mix.

I'm thinking mischief on this steamy Friday, shadows and spirits around me sending ominous signals...

Erotica, Daido Moriyama

From Blindness:
"Virtue always pitfalls on the extremely difficult path of perfection, but sin and vice are so favored by fortune."

Matteo Ferrari

Italian photographer Matteo Ferrari.

Lisa Kereszi

Not sure what exactly it is that draws me to these photos of Lisa Kereszi...

Meeting Modernity on Neojaponisme

I can't get enough of these antiquated photos of Japan.

From NeoJaponisme:
"Unearthed outside of the city of Sano in Tochigi-ken, this portrait photography series documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taishō Periods."

From 19th Internationale Photoszene Köln 2008

Ellen Auerbach/Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, "Schwefelbad, Big Sur, Kalifornien"
Elisabeth Hölzl, "Salonmeer", 2006/08, from the series: "Hotel Bristol"

nature-scapes

Clarence Betleyoun, "Catching the Wind"
Float Like a Feather, Mount Eden, Auckland City, New Zealand, 2003, Greta Anderson