I’m reluctant to call this made-in-Japan a Liquidity portrait since it’s not part of that project, nor is it, like LiquiditySF, about the banking district. And yet.
I guess there are umbrellas? What I aim for in a “liquidity” is the flow of people, the tension between identity, collective motion, presence and a sense of being carried along by an impatient world. Finding moments in the flow, usually driven by urgent commerce.
Not long ago I discovered from Joel Pulliam that photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto had included some similar-looking portraits in his 2004 book Moment. I had to see them.
The book was not easily found, but eventually a somewhat water-bent, battered copy arrived from the Japan Post on my doorstep here in California.
It’s true that some of Ishimoto’s photos look surprisingly like ones I made for LiquiditySF. But it’s also true that his purpose is different, his context different. I was floored by the beauty of this work, which includes not only those street portraits but also, mixed between the portraits, photographs of melting snow, or discarded aluminum cans worn-down on the pavement where they’ve been crushed and stepped on a thousand times, or leaves slowly dissolving in days of rain (or were the portraits, instead, mixed into those images?).
Where I’ve been trying to pluck-out solidity from the flow, Ishimoto shows that the flow continues regardless. I’m seeking individuals, he’s letting them dissipate, a reminder of impermanence.
The opposite of a true thing is also often true.
Ishimoto was born in the US, and oscillated for a while between Japan and America, becoming well-known in both countries before I was born. How I wish I’d met him. I am still moved by his receding shadow.
The title of moment is written in both English and Japanese - in Japanese twice, in fact: Once as 刻 and then in phonetic furigana as とき (“toki”) – the translation seems a bit fluid, baffling to Google and the other dictionaries I consulted. The kanji “刻” seems to mean “scratch,” or “engraving.” The closest to the English “moment” using it is maybe “時刻” as in cutting-up time. I’m no proper Japanese scholar and I don’t know what he really meant but also maybe I do. Waves of light across time. Echoes of an angel.
