Ikigai (生き甲斐) is a Japanese word that can be read literally as a “life’s worth” but can be more appropriately translated as the “purpose of one’s life.” The term seems to have been popularized in Japan in the mid-twentieth century, eventually making its way onto pop-science blogs and whatnot throughout the internet. Somewhere along the way it was broken down into four basic components that are often presented in a clever Venn diagram.
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Not the Tokyo I Once Knew
I first set foot in Japan in 2007 and I was immediately swept away by a seemingly endless metropolis packed with hidden lanes, decrepit corridors, and a patina of decay splashed with vivid neon light. I know I romanticize it. That can’t be helped—Tokyo is a romantic place! Rationally, I can understand that I may be looking at past Tokyo through rose-tinted glasses, and my early experiences of it are most likely exaggerated in my memories. But I also know Tokyo has changed losing so much of its charm in the process, and I have photographic evidence to prove it.
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Becoming a Hermit in the Woods
After years of being a photographer on social media (mainly Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram) I have come to learn the value of solitude. The road to this realization starts in naïve optimism and ends in a pit of dejection. Purely from my perspective as a creator, it is apparent to me that social media turns the pursuit of art and creativity—an inward journey that leads to a better understanding of oneself—into an online pissing contest.
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A Journey on the Rooftops of Tokyo
What drives me up the stairs—ten eleven twelve flights at a time—is curiosity. I harbor a desire to discover unusual beauty in a chaotic urban landscape. To me, the rooftops are the ‘final frontier’ in Tokyo. The streets are crawling with photographers, but few venture off the ground and into the concrete canopy—but I want to see what I can create up there. The lights and vibrations of the rooftops weave images in my mind—images which I can call my own. Obtaining a unique perspective in photography is like finding a pearl in a sea of glass beads. The chance to glimpse uncommon sights is intoxicating. It is this pursuit of a narrative individual to myself which keeps me coming back. On the roofs, I find my own voice.
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The Hidden Valleys of Ginza
I found myself crouching in a puddle of water and grease, hunkered down in the dim twilight of a narrow crevasse in the canyons of Ginza. The afternoon sunlight was a distant dream ten stories above trickling down along dust-caked walls. The aroma of trash permeated the air, a rat scurried past and entered a crack in the pavement as if absorbed. But I ignored all this and focused on what brought me to such an unpleasant place—the photography.
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Obsessed with Bicycles—or How Obsession Fuels Projects
Tokyo is filled with bicycles—all sorts of bicycles. They range from trend-setting fixed gear bicycles to plain ‘mamachari’ (or old lady bike in other words), to hi-tech carbon fiber one-off syntheses of technology and art that could be straight out of a cyberpunk video game. Their multitude of variations-mutations-customizations keep me on the hunt, but what obsesses me is not their uniqueness but their ubiquity—their commonalities.
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Positivity in Street Photography
These days, when I’m leading street photography workshops people often ask me: "what if someone gets angry when I take their picture?"
It’s an interesting question based on two assumptions. The obvious assumption is that people are likely to get angry when being photographed. The less obvious one is that people have a good reason to get angry—that being photographed in public is something to get angry about.
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A Photograph is an Experience
Recently, a friend told me of a photographer for whom he wanted to work. The seasoned fine art photographer, in his 50s, took a look at my friend’s 5x7 prints, taken on an assortment of digital and analog cameras, and said "these are not photos. Wait here." The man left for a moment and returned with a huge print mounted in a heavy wood frame. "This is a photograph," he said.
This anecdote got me thinking: what exactly is a photograph? Is it a physical object? Is it a record of light on a substrate? Is it merely information? Or is something more than that?
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