These photos by Mark King remind me of AMERICA.
A couple of weeks ago I went to an interesting exhibition at the NOW IDeA by UTRECHT space. I was impressed by the photos of Seth High, whose website doesn’t at all reflect his hilarious and skillful photography. I hope to write more later about Seth and the extensive crew of photographers—dead, alive, real, not real, whatever—with which he works.
Much more than Sokyu-sha, NOW IDeA is filled with zines and small publications from all over the world. I was unimpressed with a small book called Tokyo is Dreaming, which only contains photographs of people asleep, in Tokyo. This project would be equivalent to something like Los Angeles is Eating Tacos or San Francisco is Drinking Tecate. Of course, there are plenty of interesting ways to take pictures of people asleep in Tokyo, eating tacos in Los Angeles, or drinking Tecate in San Francisco, but I don’t think this one hit the mark. It feels like the photographer was content enough to get a sleeping person in the frame, press the button and bounce!
I picked upbriefly held the new Olympus PEN at Yodobashi. It feels very good in the hand, and the shutter makes a satisfying sound. It also costs around $1000, so unless you already have a bunch of M-mount lenses (I don’t), it may not be worth the expense. I think the old Pen F still looks better, it’s more angular and the leather patch on the left is more dramatic.
nerd