Tokyo Blues by Do Projects

December 3, 2009 2:16 PM

Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a free PDF under the CC license.
posted by malphigian (16 comments total)

Haha! Just goes to show, whatever you're doing, someone's done it before... I shoot these blue tarps constantly here in Tokyo, and even started a related Flickr group where folks can ad their wrapped and shrouded stuff.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:40 PM on December 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Interesting photobook. I was surprised at how many dwellings are actually being made out of these tarps and the level of construction of some of them. In the afterward, I read:

These structures, by any reasonable definition, are
houses, so much so that the word “homeless” begins to
look a little problematic. They have porches, vestibules,
windows, retractable skylights, and – most critically –
some of them even have doors that lock. In the stan-
dard to which these structures are generally maintained
and in the crisp intervals between them, you can feel the
quintessential Japanese concern for community, for the
needs of others, that survives even the most precipitous
of personal falls from grace.

In the US, I think, such structures would simply encourage law enforcement to regard everything happening in such encampments as a bit too permanent and those living there would be driven from town ASAP.
posted by hippybear at 2:42 PM on December 3, 2009

Yuck, I cant get past the selective desaturation. Like most gimicks, that is only cute the first time you see it.
posted by rubin at 3:27 PM on December 3, 2009

I am glad to see adamgreenfield+co getting Do Projects off the ground, but must agree about selective desaturation. It's a fine line to toe with art photography and documentary photography, though, and I'd say this errs just on the side of being OK.

I ordered adam's "The City Is Here For You To Use" a when the preorder happened. Hope he finds time to finish it in the next half-decade.
posted by fake at 3:45 PM on December 3, 2009

So at what point does this become art?
Christo shrouds buildings in a rather inferior way to the ambitious cloaking achieved by construction sites, but Christo sells graphic multiples of his sketches. These guys photograph and selectively desaturate. But who is the artist? Almost any construction site contains assemblages of materials and textures that make Christo, Richard Serra, David Smith and especially Mark Di Suvero look like pikers. The trenches dug by your average street repair crew more awesome than 90 percent of the gallery-validated "earth art."
posted by Faze at 4:01 PM on December 3, 2009

So at what point does this become art?

I realize you may not expect an actual answer to this question, and I'd be first to admit that there is, in fact, no objective answer for it, really, but lemme take a stab at it nonetheless: In the case of photography, it becomes "art" at the point a photographer points his or her camera at it and shoots. The act of photographing these things, deciding how to frame them and present them, is the photographer's art. This has been the widely-held view, at least, for a long time now. The photographer's subjects are often the humdrum, everyday objects that people pass by every day of their lives without really noticing or thinking about too much. A good photographer can make us notice these things, see them in a new way. Perhaps help us really "see" them for the first time. And that's when something becomes art.

Now, as to whether you personally like it or not, that's another matter.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:23 PM on December 3, 2009

Almost any construction site contains assemblages of materials and textures that make Christo, Richard Serra, David Smith and especially Mark Di Suvero look like pikers.

Not to diminish the skills of construction workers, but the wrapping of the Reichstag building and the Rifle Curtain in Colorado took more quite a bit of advanced engineering.

I particularly don't want to dis Japanese construction workers: their 24/7 remodeling jobs on older buildings get done in an astonishingly short amount of time.

I like these photos, by the way. Blue tarp. Duck tape. Classics: deconstructable, if you're in an academic frame of mind.
posted by kozad at 5:02 PM on December 3, 2009

I'd say that most of the photographer's art is actually in selecting the photos they choose to show you from the (presumably numerous) photos they don't. Martin Parr had a great speech on this that was featured on wemakemoneynotart.com, but I can't find it.
posted by fake at 5:30 PM on December 3, 2009

A good photographer can make us notice these things, see them in a new way. Perhaps help us really "see" them for the first time. And that's when something becomes art.

A good photographer would take the shots in a way that the blue tarps occupy the attention of the viewer without having to resort to selective coloring.
posted by Poagao at 5:57 PM on December 3, 2009

Great link. The blue tarps really are everywhere in Japan, used in a hundred--a thousand--different ways. In Tokyo you'll mainly see the blue tarps in parks where the homeless live; it's almost a "building" requirement that homeless use blue tarps to make their shelters.
posted by zardoz at 6:30 PM on December 3, 2009

I like the selective desaturation because of the way it illumines overlooked feature of the landscape in a way that's particularly interesting in a digital format. I found myself clicking through the images once slowly, and then very fast, like a flip book. It was kind of cool to watch those tarps flap about in space. If the photographs were conventionally colored I don't think the sense of this sort of ubiquitous polygon inhabiting diverse volumes would come through in such an animated and shape-shifting way.

I'm really not fond of gimmicky stuff either, but this isn't a case of just "ooh, blue tarps are blue!" There's a quality of persistence to the tarps when you look at the whole set of images. Everything around them is in flux, and this cheap, disposable material in the most gawdawful unnatural color (I call it "cookie monster" blue, and I can't stand it) seems timeless and enduring. It's eerie and unsettling and cool.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:27 PM on December 3, 2009

A good photographer would take the shots in a way that the blue tarps occupy the attention of the viewer without having to resort to selective coloring.

A good viewer might consider why a particular design choice was made, and what that choice changes about the viewers perception. Like I said above, I don't think this is about focusing on a blue tarp in a picture.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:30 PM on December 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

A good viewer might consider why a particular design choice was made, and what that choice changes about the viewers perception.

*sigh* Maybe someday I will have the level of taste and perception to appreciate this kind of photography.
posted by Poagao at 10:56 PM on December 3, 2009

flapjax at midnite wrote: A good photographer can make us notice these things, see them in a new way. Perhaps help us really "see" them for the first time. And that's when something becomes art.

Poagao replied: A good photographer would take the shots in a way that the blue tarps occupy the attention of the viewer without having to resort to selective coloring.

I'd like to clarify that I was discussing the concept of art and photography in general, in the abstract, in answer to Faze's earlier comment. My comment wasn't one that *endorsed* the technique of selective coloring or this particular artist.

As regards this particular project, I'd say that even though I'm not crazy about this technique, I still (FWIW) happen to think this is a good photographer, even though she used a technique that I'm not especially fond of. In this case I can understand why she chose to use the technique.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:31 PM on December 3, 2009

I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh in my judgment. Like many things, such as tilt-shift and HDR, it's just not my thing, and I've always had a hard time understanding what other people get out of it.
posted by Poagao at 11:38 PM on December 3, 2009

I'm happy; I learned a new word - selective desaturation.

For my part, I've been thinking about the phrase 'blue tarp architecture' for a few months now. Not deeply, but it's a useful linguistic hook for an idea.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:35 PM on December 4, 2009