And now that you’ve got the information, how will you use it? A series of interviews by #sublimeisnow. #4
And now that you’ve got the information, how will you use it? A series of interviews by #sublimeisnow.
#4 NAOYUKI OGINO
Camilla Crescini: As a photographer, you have a really precise idea. In fact, we can read in your artist’s statement that you “feel sometimes the beauty engendered from a harmoniously shining moment by the relation between something like the hidden "nature" of human or phenomenon or field and the history or society, culture, people around, environment, or weather”. Can you tell me more about this? Do you think that art is always linked in a certain way with society, economics and politics. Why?
Naoyuki Ogino: I believe we cannot be other person. Maybe some people try to pretend but it is pretend. If we go out from ourselves, it would be weaker and weaker. The more powerful, the more beautiful is when the person is in her/his true and total self. But under modern education fitted to capitalism, our eyes are almost becoming blind to see ourselves. As it is not easy and usual, I think it is very important to try to find and focus on that scene. And I think it is important to grab that scene not under somewhere disconnected place like inside white studio but under life surrounded and influenced by it’s own history, society, culture, people or other environmental things. I am happy if I can imprint such a scene on my photography. Most of these scenes are silent and doesn’t look like powerful but for me it is really powerful with calmness.
I think the modern art are strongly linked with society, economics, and politics (three matters). It is because the “art” are located to be seen under relation with those three matters by the people who see it as art and I do not deny that. But I am not sure if all the art should be in such a position. I am not sure if the creator of “l’art brut” are thinking of linkage with society, economics or politics. The people who name those things as “l’art brut”, they are locating them under those three matters. For me society, economics, or politics are not the matters to layout under axis between support or against, like or dislike, good or bad. For me these three matters are on the same row as light, shadow, wind, rain, or composition of soil, land, nature or other matters surrounding us. At least I am trying to face on this way toward three matters. Maybe I feel these three modern matters functions like black smoke in interfering the shinning beauty of the persons but even though sometimes black smoke might draw the shinning moment of the person.
If I am a journalist, I might focus more strongly on three matters but I don’t want to patronage them in special way. If I commit them with more power, I would be addicted by them and I think it would be difficult to grab the shinning moment of the person in her/his nature. My main focus is not to shout but to follow the shinning and the power of nature with silence.
CC: I recall that when we’ve met in Milan this spring you mentioned the fact that you’ve build your own lenses and camera. Do I remember well?
What type of camera is it and how have you managed to build it by yourself?
NO: I made my own lens and not a camera. This is a very simply hand made lens. The main reason I needed to make a simple hand made lens was to reveal my deserted windows. The world's manufactured complex lenses are optically very well designed, but perhaps they are too faithful. I became to realize that my inside brain applications (imaging the light coming from my eyes in accustomed way) are all updated and brainwashed through all images formed through these manufactured complex lens since my birth. All the images that we see nowadays are made by these well designed complex lenses. It is a really big inference and we never have a doubt about the images these complex lens shows us. But I happen to realize that our own eyes' lens is not like manufactured complex lens. Just hundreds of years ago people used to see more freely like it appears on the Ukiyoe (Japanese woodblock print established in the Eo period) print or paints in the caves or painting of Maya or other images made before manufactured complex lens came out.. I needed to give freedom to aberrations, as well as boundaries. I needed to create freedom for both the optical and the imagined axises, so the world and I can swing freely. I thought it is very difficult to re-brainwash and change immediately my inside brain application of imaging so I decided to destroy the lens instead of destroying the appreciation. Maybe if I train well like the shamans, I might have easily get different applications but I tried the other way looks like more easy for me and I searched for making a hand made lens to reveal my deserted windows maybe opened in my childhood days and closed during my growth under modern circumstance.
CC: For the series Skin, Aevum and Offspring Spirits you use a very special technique. Can you describe it for me?
NO: For Offspring Spirits series, I use the hand made lens I mentioned above. I am using this lens with digital camera and I am photographing not by watching through finder but facing straight to the scene and watching by my body. Watching by my body I mean watching with my two eyes open and feeling by my full body heading-on straight toward the moment. Technically I am trying not to change the white balance and I am photographing them with 5,000K temperature fixed. Then I modify a little bit about levels but not much changes. The data has a huge gradation and if I touch a lot, those gradation suddenly breaks and make strange lines on it. Then I test more than 60 patterns of the combination with papers and ink to realize the atmosphere I was feeling. Finally I found with which combination of paper and ink is better and with which adjustment of the printer setting is fine for this project.
Every time when I have almost done my new project, I start to figure out how I print that project. Few occasion, I have from the beginning which printing process and material I will use before starting the project.
For Aevum series, I am also using the same hand made lens, and for this project I am using salt print made on Ganpi Japanese paper coated by myself. I was testing this combination of salt print and Ganpi (with very thin paper) slowly for more than a year. The reason I wanted to use Gampi was that I loved the texture of this paper which Japanese called in old days as a King of paper and the atmosphere that gives me with the combination with salt print. With this paper, we see not only by reflecting light from the surface but also we see the images with see-through lights coming from the back of the paper as this is very thin. These two lights combination gives us rich atmosphere and a kind of movement. I see the same thing from the Rembrandt’s engraving with Ganpi. Then I thought it is a wonderful combination with this material, process and my hand made lens effect to lead us toward a special scenes of Aevum. Aevum is a Late Latin word of scholati philosophy, which express a mode of existence experienced by angels and by the saints in heaven. In some ways, it exists between the eternity (timelessness) of God(s) and the temporal experience of material beings. I wanted to realize this scenes through this project.
CC: How do you work and what’s your creative process?
NO: Most of the time, I don’t know what I am doing with the newly started projects. Something grabs me and I start to follow that sense without knowing what it is exactly. Most of the time, I continue to walk and work with grope. Then I face toward the photographs I had taken, and a kind of outline start to appear and then I follow that continuing photographing and again trying to select them which are still under mist with omen for shine. When I reach the shine, I start to find way to print those images and also try to start writing statement going deep inside me to grab them by words and when I have the words, my view become clear and the new scene appears there. Then, it is when I start to think sharing the image with other people.
CC: How important is the medium, the technique, for you?
NO: The medium and material gives me a chance to realize what I had inside me (many time existing unconsciously) and gives me a chance to realize consciously. The medium are essential to make evident for photography and they are wonderful "Gamahé" for me to get an access toward deep inside me. It is like RAW data of digital photography without screen and computer doesn't show us what they are. We need to develop and project on the screen to see the content of RAW data. New techniques are also the wonderful tools for me that give me a chance to find a new vision toward the world. They are like my new physical eyes and applications.
CC: You pay lot of attention to the material and the print. Especially in Skin we can see an extraordinary variety of materials, printing processes and types of printed paper. Which role plays the material in your work as artist?
NO: For Skin series, I am using salt print on Ganpi paper and the images are taken by normal macro lens photographing the images appeared on the surface of the same Ganpi paper in front of naked person which is very near to photogram. This series is rare case that I am photographing by modeling the person inside their room. I liked the appearance of skins on salt print with Ganpi and I wanted to deliver the real person in front of me toward an existence in the world of myth. It could be an opposite side from Aevum series. On Aevum series I am photographing the icons of the inhabitant of the world of myth to be seen as a real human and with Skin series I am trying to photograph the real person to see them as the inhabitant of the world of myth. Working on this series, I was thinking of handprints inside caves. I was also thinking about "Gamahé", the issue of recognition. So I decided to manage with the same date to make negative image and positive image. Also I decided to use many different materials for this prints. As this Gampi paper is very thin, I realized that I can apply the idea of "Urasaishiki" from old days Japanese painting used by Jyakuchu Ito which paints from the back of the thin silk to softener the color, and combine the technique of glueing the metal foil for Byobu (also Japanese old style wall paintings) painting. I made several versions with several metal foil glued on the back of Ganpi paper to be seen through from the front. You can refer more details on my statement of Skin series.
CC: Aevum is one of your series that I find most fascinating. There’s a sense of mystery, a sense of holiness and of personality.
Can you tell me more about the series?
NO: It is great the this series fascinate you, a person from western culture, as this was my first series I made in western land. To answer this question, I will write my statement for Aevum first.
Aevum is a Late Latin word of scholatic philosophy, which expresses a mode of existence experienced by angels and by the saints in heaven. In some ways, it exists between the eternity (timelessness) of God and the temporal experience of material beings. When I visited Milan, I felt a strong power of existence from the idols images and statues all around the city. Sometimes they were more real than material beings for me and I felt as if they just idled their pulse for an instance or for an eternal period of moment in our world. I started to hear the “idling pulse” coming from somewhere of the timelessness gods’ world or just from adjacent world next to my world. I felt everything exists in a complex of aevum in its own way. My eyes started NOT to distinct anymore sculptures from paintings, gods from people, and even the “mannequins” started to walk around with deep idling pulse in aevum.
CC: This series is born from one of your visits in Milan. Was it a cultural shock for you?
NO: Cultural shock is normally happens when we see something "different" from one’s background culture. In this case it was rather opposite. It is true that the beauty of sculptures and paintings are very different from what we have in Japan or what I used to see in Mexico where I was living 3 times in total of 10 years but it was not that part that lead me to start photographing in Milan this series. It was a kind of finding "similarity".
By knowledge I knew that in Europe they had a huge pre-christianity culture and it is very famous the Greek culture or the cradle Roman culture but it was this moment that I could feel with reality that they are piled up in this land and coexisting in this land still now in some way. I heard the huge glacier of christian unity in Europe (which was my prejudice) crash inside my ear and all the gods of polytheism from Greek or cradle Roman or maybe even other ones started to show me their shadows all around Milan walking at my back. Like a huge metropolitan city, now I saw the real Milan, people walking with many foreign tourist like me and together with Saints, angels, Christ and also the gods from Greek and Roman were walking there together, standing or lying invisibly aside. This was what I found in Milan the "similarity" with Japan especially with Kyoto.
As the name of Milan describes, this place has a feeling of middle by point of view from geopolitics and geology as a joint of peninsula, a joint from continent to the boot, a joint from modernity to classicality, a joint from now and past. I felt as I am watching the crossing road and on the cross point of the road, I saw the cross of culture, people, gods, time and cross among reality and illusion.
CC: I’ve noticed that beginning with Offspring Spirits your formal style has changed from the series before. What’s happened? Is this a new chapter of your work as artist?
NO: I think yes, though it has a same basement. If I try to figure out the triggers, I think it is mixture of two elements. I moved here to Kyoto in 2008 and I think it is one of the element caused the change. Before 2008, I was living in Nagoya and I had already started photographing the Geisha district in Kyoto by visiting from Nagoya every month since 1999 but visiting and living was totally different. Kyoto is a city continuing science 794A.D. which is over 1,222 years without break. So walking around the city, I happen to face many stratum of culture. Living here, Kyoto instructed me the existence of the very faint shine still surviving under modern strong light. I often describe this using the metaphor of Yin and Yang. Yang is a kind of light of the sun which has more character of left handed brain with logics and Yin is a kind of faint shine of the moon with the character of right handed brain with feelings. Living in Kyoto opened my eyes to catch the faint shine of Yin. The second element, I think influenced me, is coming through interviews I did with several shamans in several countries in search of this Yin faint shine. I am not sure if those trial to make photograph of the shamans become a series to show but I am sure that the interviews I did opened another eyes for me to see the Yin part faint shaine.
CC: Would you say that there is a common thread in your overall work? What is it?
NO: Eyes for the Yin part faint shine. I have tree theme for my photography. One is a look toward “life of the Mongoloid-cultural bloc” and the next is a look toward “Power of IMO(Shakti or women)” and the other is a look toward “Inbetween”. All of these for me are the eyes for the faint shine of Yin part.
CC: What and who does (or did) influence you and your work?
NO: Oh that should be many. As far as what comes on my mind now, my experience living in Mexico and Kyoto are very strong. Feeling the native Mexican culture was strong experience for me and strong influence for me. I used to collect old coins with many imprint damages on it and fossils. I think they are already showing my interests toward imprints or index of existence. It might be heard strange but my experience playing football in Mexico has also strong influence for my space grasp. About who; The people I met = the shamans The painters = Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Tsuguharu Leonard Foujita, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Edward Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, Francisco de Goya, Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt, Pierre Bonnard, Alfaro Siqueiros, Hokusai, Rosetsu Nagasawa, Utamaro and unknown painters of the paintings in the caves The music = Mexican Mariachi, Cuban music The Japanese storyteller = Danshi Tachikawa The writers = Carlos Castaneda, Joseph Campbell, Garcia Marquez, Saint-Exupéry The Sculptor = Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Rodin The Scholar = Sizuka Shirakawa, Albert Einstein, Buckminster Fuller The Animation Director = Hayao Miyazaki The play = Noh from Zeami and Kanami, Phantom of the opera The photographer are too close and and too many to describe.
CC: As last question, I’d like to know if there is -and what is it- your biggest obsession in your work as artist.
NO: To be present at the moment. For me having a good prints or having a good exhibitions are not the biggest obsession. For me the biggest obsession is to be there at the moment feeling and watching and communicating with the beauty of the nature of the human and with the surroundings. For me the photography is the fossil of the moment of the life and it is also very beautiful as it lead us and connects us toward the existence of the life.
#sublimeisnow
© Naoyuki Ogino
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