Environmental matters

Met some very interesting people tonight. Slightly drunk on seredipity. Plus a lemon Chu-Hi or three so thought I`d just share this great collection of images with you.

My personal favourite is by Dave Walsh in the changing climate section. Simple, almost a cliche yes but so very well captured and anyway i`m a fanof Dave`s work generally.

I also liked Living Stone by  Khaled Hasan.

Talk soon

Damon

And the results are…

..written on the faces of the fans.

South Korea`s Pohang Steelers won 2-1 over Al-Ittihad from Saudi Arabia in the Asian Champions League final in the national stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Yes I was there with two young football fans (namely my sons of 6 and 4) so obviously I could do bugger all photography. But we were sat in the Korean supporters section and when the two goals went in they celebrated rather wildly and I manage to get a few shots from my seat. I should say when the second goal by defender, Kim Hyung Il, was headed in during the 66th minute, as during the first goal I was balancing friend noodles, an open-topped beaker of drink and a youngest child on my knee so missed it all.

Still we had a good time. And still got a thing or two to learn about wide angle sport photography like Bob Martin here.

Damon

Animal Rights

Sorry for the length of time taken in writing this: (not writing, or writing this on a laptop and being unable to get on the internet to post it for a day or so): I just seem unable to get a spare half hour to myself these days to collect my thoughts and jot down a note here on the day I`ve just had, or had a while ago, or had ages ago sometimes, so much so, that I actually give up writing the piece I had planned. Old news and all that.

But this Sunday JUST gone was a day I do want to write about. Thanks to the kind recommendation of the very talented snapper, Will Robb, I found myself in Shibuya on Sunday photographing an animal rights demo.

As I have written before, the Japanese love their animals (except whales and dolphins it seems) indeed sometimes they love them too much. But Japan also loves anything boomingly popular and against all the odds and the earlier support of important and influential people in the catwalk biz, fur is back as a must-have item for the sartorially inclined and is, of course, being bought and worn massively by the young follows of fashion here.

I have never thought people should wear fur unless they killed the animal themselves or are using it in a place where the warmth provided by nature`s best insulation material is life-preservingly useful rather than just momentarily “hot”. A friend of mine, a noted and respected environmentalist and adventurer, agonized over using a good self-portrait of himself for marketing because he appeared in the image wearing a fur-lined hood. The fact the image was taken in Antarctica or some other bitterly cold place made the fur a necessity, or at the very least a welcome addition to his choice of protective layers, but still the image gave all the wrong messages in my friend`s mind.

These dilemmas are not something the “in crowd” of Harajuku, Shibuya and Nagoya worry about though, for them fur is literally and metaphorically  unconnected to the animals it came from. Something the anti fur demo I went to hoped to correct.

Organized by Animal Rights Center (ARC) over two-hundred people marched through a cold and grey Sunday afternoon carrying pictures and chanting slogans asking people to connect their love of the latest fashion fad to the harrowing cruelty of the fur farm that feeds it. The images and information provided pulled no punches: the small van that led the parade had photographs of skinned rabbits and caged cats all over it; two attractive women led the parade wearing furs and carrying placards that said,”we are wearing dead animals”; and four men carried a sheet behind them on which a pile of unwanted fur clothing was piled in a solemn funeral procession.

I`m not an activist on this issue and as I talked to the marchers after, it became clear that my ethics, though I thought them ethical enough, cut no ice with people there who took their opinions more seriously. I am not a vegetarian or vegan, I tend to put people first in the world`s list of to-do problems and I thought that to hate someone for their choice otherwise is not justified. Granted some things are beyond the acceptable, I don`t think anyone likes cruelty to animals and I abhor it, but I do eat meat and my usual, laugh-along justification for eating only chickens and sheep because they are stupid got cold stares because to many of the people there, any death of an animal for our benefit is cruel and unwarranted and of course they are more than right on that fact: stupidity is no justification at all to kill and eat something.

I may not be the perfect animal lover but I do love nature and don`t like people wearing fur and that is why I could support this march as I photographed it and hope to spread some of the images I took far and wide to raise the issue. The extrapolation of this understanding of right and wrong to the likes of the Animal Liberation Front and its stronger, more direct and dangerous actions I could make less easily than some of the others there that day but that is maybe because I see less of a problem than they do. When I take the same point of view something I am passionate about like the Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd group`s actions on Japanese whaling the connection from ineffective but polite to effective but aggressive seems more obviously necessary and understandable. Something perhaps a Japanese fisherman wouldn`t see however.

There is no clear cut issue for me to hang my hat on: I cannot choose sides in the total right of all animals to exists removed from service to us. Basically I have some moral compass on this regarding the rights of wild animals and what is an isn`t acceptable for the rest but am still hopelessly lost in my own accidental duplicity as an evolutionarily-designed omnivorous mammal. If I`m honest this is what I hope is true for most people which is why I was so struck with the fact that young Japanese women, most often seen as unthinking, fad-fed zombies, were taking part in the demo. That they cared, that they cared enough to take a stand and be seen publicly going against the power of their peers and a general apathy of opinion was humbling. That they didn`t do this as yet another fad of protest but genuinely researched, worried, stressed and tried to change what they had discovered and determined to be wrong was amazing. I have recently been photographing and researching a lot of this growing political maturity in the Japanese. Some might not exactly know why they care about an issue so deeply and some, I`m sure, feel that merely paddling in those heady waters of revolt is quite deep enough for them, for now, but many people in Japan are beginning to go out and make their voice heard and are prepared to stand up for their beliefs in way that is not expected or easily accepted in this country and you have to admire that.

That`s all for now, got a lot to do (see above) will talk soon.

Damon

The world is a picture

The other morning I was walking to work when a large Jungle Crow, obviously spooked by my approach, took to the sky with a loud, rattling “caw!” Now these are animals that you can find noisily frequenting any pile of trash in any Japanese city and many people here consider them pests. But to me, at that moment, the sound was one of pure wilderness.

The Japanese have a lovely word called natsukashii (懐かしい) which is often translated at nostalgia. I think the innate sence of loss in that word makes it unsuitable though. Fond memories, as another attempt at interpretation, is better but natsukashii is an adjective that describes more the process of enjoying fond memories than remembering them. To my mind a phrase like “That takes me back” or the more generally descriptive “A trip down Memory Lane” come closer to the idea.

Like many Japanese  emotional words it is not an easy one to translate because this word does not speak exactly for the moment being expressed. There are many words like that in Japanese and that is perhaps the one advantage the language has over English because while we can nominally share the feelings being described at the level of evolution we have simultaneously achieved with whoever we are stood next too; to explain the emotion exactly to anyone who wasn`t actually there and who hasn`t shared a similar history is almost impossible without waxing overly poetical and using a lot more words than the `one` the Japanese find sufficient.

The point of that symantic aside was however that as the crow took to the wing with its call hitting the morning mist and the snap and rustle of its wings stirring the air, I was completely natsukashii.

I am a city boy now you see, but I didn`t always used to be. Indeed far from it, my wilderness resume is quite impressive: I climbed, camped and travelled far from many beaten tracks in my feral youth. And even in the suburban woodlands of my hometown I always managed to find some adventure often just by being out when others slept or crossing that fence that said I couldn`t or wandering that bit deeper into the nature we take for granted and treat so irreverently but which is, in reality, redder in tooth and claw than we usually imagine; even in your own back garden if you look close enough. Anyway part of that feeling came back to me with the sound of the crow. There is nothing like the sound of a crow cawing on a misty Autumn morning to make you feel the loss of that freedom to explore as the wing beats disappearing off into the distance; the echoing sounds of flight and the early morning mist of Autumn wrapping me in…well…natsukashii.

See?!

Martin Heidegger the philosopher said: (I paraphrase)” A crucial shift in how the Western people experienced the world was when it became seen as a picture, seperate and detached from the viewer. Upto then people has seen themselves as part of the world.”

These days a crow encounter is a picture for stock or if I can be bothered to get closer and find some original angle it could become a wildlife or Japanese society and lifestyle piece. But for a moment there when I was walking to work, with no camera out because where I live is really, really boring! it reminded me that a crow is also part of  the world which I have become much too seperated from these past seven years in Tokyo.

Damon

 

Diwali dancers

Happy Diwali to any and all Indian readers.

Yesterday was a day of culture. Not Japanese culture no but first some German bonhomie at the Yokohama Oktoberfest.

After that I walked across to Yamashita Park for some Indian culture at Yokohama Diwali festival from which this picture was taken. The beer was better at Octoberfest, the food amazing at Diwali. God I have missed good curry!!!

Busy but will write more soon.

Damon

Money talks

Or rather it doesn`t. I went to the the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday for some…ahem….stock shots. And it was so quiet, so peaceful, serene even, with none of that brash, ballistic noise I`ve seen on TV and in movies about Wall Street and London. Hard to believe that over 700 Trillion Yen`s worth of stocks and shares get traded there each year; (if it`s a good year anyways), but then maybe I`m out of date and the energy of the yuppie years is not true anywhere, anymore.

It was obviously a rich place though, the traders my not have been wearing red braces and talking arrogantly into their cell phones but they oozed confident wealth. I guess the reason such people are paid so much is they had better not be intimidated handling large wedges of cash, especially when it is not there money.

Standing on the stylish and oh so minimalist viewing deck, looking at the share price whizzing around on the display called the ticker tape or gazing down through the glass cylinder at the traders sitting silently at their computers it did feel strange. This world is unknowable to me and though I nominally understand the culture and can even connect to it at some genetic level it was like watching animals at the zoo.

Money movers (corporate gamblers) are far from an endangered species unfortunately, and many people now feel inclined and justified in taking a few pot shots at them (metaphorically speaking of course) as the economy struggles but I did almost feel connected to them in a “capitalists in the mist” sort of way as I watched them watching me take pictures. Maybe because they are japanese and thus friendlier, or maybe traders are more humbled worldwide these days but I have always hated the people of that world of easy wealth and these people just didn`t seem to fit that image. Outside in the cafes and noodle shops I saw traders in expensive suits nursing their 200 Yen coffees over manga comics and others slurping their 600 Yen bowls of noodles down at cramped, and almost rustically unhygienic tables only inches from where I too ate my noodles and I realized that somehow they had become human again.

Maybe it isn`t a good year in the markets though.

Interesting that gains are written in red and the loses in green!

Later Damon