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Why did the author mostly creepshot women and children?
I love how life in Tokyo is so middle-class and family oriented compared to US cities like SF and NYC.
Young children ride the subway alone to school, it’s a different world
I love how life in Tokyo is so middle-class and family oriented compared to US cities like SF and NYC.
US cities would be middle class and family oriented if middle class and family oriented people chose to live in them. There’s nothing natural or inevitable about suburbia.
Japan's centralization of population, strong public transit systems and city design is something that vastly appeals to me.
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US cities would be middle class and family oriented if middle class and family oriented people chose to live in them. There’s nothing natural or inevitable about suburbia.
It's immensely unfortunate that there's still this ingrained mindset that in order to live a proper middle-class life you have to settle in the middle of suburbia hell where there's nothing around for miles. Though it doesn't help that the entire system is built to subsidize and encourage islands of suburbia separated by long stretches of highway. Japan's centralization of population, strong public transit systems an…
And there's no political will anywhere in the USA, suburban or urban areas, to change any of this.
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The author is the (female) photographer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikiko_Hara Why does a candid photo of a woman or child have to be considered a creepshot in your mind?
> Why does a candid photo of a woman or child have to be considered a creepshot in your mind? As a guy the Japanese police will not be happy if you take candids of women or kids
That's true. There is a lot of fear, prejudice and prudery around gender and age in the arts.
That doesn't mean we should stop thinking: It's crucial to assess for ourselves whether a picture appears to us as offensive as we are confronted with it.
Otherwise the criticism is just meaningless, recycled fear.
It's very small, if not the smallest 35mm camera out there, which makes it inconspicuous. Also it only has zone-focusing, which means you have to guess how far your subject is away from you. You'd only use the viewfinder for framing and setting your exposure. However, since I also used the flash, the exposure was fixed anyways. I usually put a roll of Portra 400 in, which I pushed to 800. All that allowed me to stop down the lens quite a bit, so I knew that everything in around 1.5 to 15 meters distance would be in focus when I press the shutter. And I didn't worry about the framing, so I didn't use the viewfinder.
This gave me an instantaneous access to situations and pictures that otherwise would've been long gone after looking into the viewfinder and setting the focus and exposure. I didn't worry much about how I held the camera and just used my intuition. It really was a kind of liberating way to create images. So yeah, the camera does matter! Although I think I only paid around $100 for this one.
Those are a couple images I took in Paris that way:
* https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-2.jpg
* https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-3.jpg
* https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/paris/paris-4.jpg
And one I took in Cologne: https://gereonrecht.com/photographs/images/cologne-man-with-...
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It's immensely unfortunate that there's still this ingrained mindset that in order to live a proper middle-class life you have to settle in the middle of suburbia hell where there's nothing around for miles. Though it doesn't help that the entire system is built to subsidize and encourage islands of suburbia separated by long stretches of highway. Japan's centralization of population, strong public transit systems an…
Can't blame American families for choosing suburbia. US cities are a mess -- too many crazies, needles and trash everywhere, traffic congestion and poor public transit, expensive housing, and so forth. And there's no political will anywhere in the USA, suburban or urban areas, to change any of this.
Individual families were not expected to walk out into the fields and personally make them habitable. They certainly weren’t turned away by policies designed to preserve the status quo, compensate/empower those adversely affected by a proposed change, etc.
Highway construction, planning codes, development and mortgage finance, public debt, subsidized infrastructure, etc. were all assembled and optimized to make it as easy as possible for suburbia to happen precisely as it did.
That was a choice. We could make the same choice about urbanism. (Imagine an Interstate Highway System-level investment in urban subways). We don’t.
One of my favorite Youtube channels is Rambalac. It's just videos of walking through various places in Japan, from crowded streets to peaceful natural areas. No voiceover or explanations - almost every video is as if a video camera were moving around on its own and recording everything it saw (occasionally he interacts with things). Super relaxing to have on in the background, and really cool to watch to get a glimpse of everyday life there.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Rambalac
Here's some of the videos, there's a huge variety:
Shibuya at night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qGiXY1SB68
Shinjuku evening walk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHr4qSQ-5XU
Kyoto's Kiyomizudera in the morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAeN7TdGq4o
Cat island (Tashirojima): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnfzALzLNgY
Playing with deer at Nara: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu4GJwCpX2w
Shibuya Halloween: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkm522cTpzE
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> Why does a candid photo of a woman or child have to be considered a creepshot in your mind? As a guy the Japanese police will not be happy if you take candids of women or kids
> As a guy the Japanese police will not be happy if you take candids of women or kids That's true. There is a lot of fear, prejudice and prudery around gender and age in the arts. That doesn't mean we should stop thinking: It's crucial to assess for ourselves whether a picture appears to us as offensive as we are confronted with it. Otherwise the criticism is just meaningless, recycled fear.
That's an interesting thought. Do you think photographers should have a moral responsibility? A famous example I can think of is the controversy surrounding "The vulture and the little girl" by Kevin Carter.
In terms of street photography, is it OK to "creep" or invade someone's privacy, especially that of children? There is certainly a line between telling a story and trashy exploitation, the question is where is it?
