Nippon Camera

Work from the show can now be seen in April`s issue of Nippon Camera, available at most bookstores.

Exhibition Movie

I just published a low res movie of the show on my homepage
it can be found at
www.rossckelly.com/moviepage.html
Quality is not great as it was shot as an mpeg on a compact camera but its just for illustration.

The Day Has Come

Finally, it has arrived,
Today begins my first solo show, for which I have been busily occupied for 5 months.
Theres 17 pieces on display, some old, some brand new. Mostly of Tokyo but some are from New York Melbourne, Vancouver and London. Its been really hard work but its definately been worth it. All are welcome to come and have a look at the Past Rays gallery in Nihonbashi. Details and a map are on my homepage. I should be there Saturdays and most Fridays and if anyone has any questions or points I really look forward to meeting you.

Japan... The story so far...

It`s been almost 10 months since my first show here in japan, the Spiral SICF show in Omotesando; And alot has happaned in that time. I`d like to thank all those who have helped me along the way and everyone who has taken the time to look at my work either online or at the various shows I`ve participated in since then.
Japan has been an inspiration to me. The landscape of Tokyo has given me just the kind of visual elements I needed to develop my work, in theory and in technique. And I find that now I have a far greater command of my art and a solid view of where it is heading. Exhibiting in Japan has also been a joy. I apolpgise to all the people I have met that have had to put up with my rather basic Japanese... I`m no linguist and being of a solitary nature and having a wife that is fluent in English have spoiled me. Even so, I have learned alot exhibiting here. My second show was Design Festa followed by the Shiodome Art Village. This was a great experience as I got to build some pieces in front of an audience and got a better feeling for how people percieved my work. One of the main problems that always comes up is that people dont intuitively understand that my pieces are made up of individual photographs. Because each shot is reduced in size and because there are so many, people tend to think that it is a collage made of 3 or 4 photos cut up, rather then hundreds of seperate ones. I still have not found a satisfactorary way of getting this idea across instinctively.
After the art village came Geisai, where I had the honor and joy of recieving the shows pentax award for photography. It was an unforgettable experience. Especially getting up on stage to recieve the award in front of the crowd and the cameras. I was almost too nervous to talk, even though I spoke through a translator. Unfortunately I dont know If I messed up any because my wife had to go to a wedding that day and nobody I knew saw me get the award... not even a photo!
After Geisai I found a Gallery that wanted to put on a solo show. Kazuaki Inoue San of the Past Rays Gallery in Ginza Agreed to host a show in March for about 15 works. I was delighted and With that in mind I went some way to fulfilling another dream of mine by going to New York and Chicago to shoot some pieces for the show.
Towards the end of last year I recieved another pleasant surprise. A runners up award in the Signpoosha National Book Publishing competition. I had entered a collection of travel photographs that I had amassed over the last 15 years or so and had been wanting to publish as a book. Now that the work has been completed for the Past Rays show I am going to make some time to look at how I edited the book and review the pictures I chose because I want to persue that project also...
But first things first... my first big show in Japan begins in one week and everyone is extreamly welcome ... details on my homepage and thanks to everyone who helped make it possible.
RCK



Thanks all round for some great shows

From a previous version of this blog

Shiodome Art Village

This was a great experience all round and a fabulous opportunity to actually build some pieces in front of an audience, get some direct

feedback and gauge general interest in the project. My sincere thanks and appreciation to Hayashi san of Nelke Planning, who organized the show

and Takeshi san the artistic coordinator, for giving me the opportunity to participate. The art village was constructed around the Taro exhibition and gave passers-by the chance to see original artworks being made as well as watch live performances of various artforms. The Shiodome Shiosite was a fantastic venue for the exhibition. and hopefully they will host a different show next year too.

Sep 18 2006

Geisai #10

This Sunday was another valuable experience in Japan. It`s fantastic to be able to show your work to people who love and appreciate what youre trying to do. My thanks to all who stopped by. I just wish I could communicate better in Japanese..... in time hopefully! I was also delighter to win my first award here in Japan. Mr Nakano, the Managing Director of advertising for Pentax Corporate presented me with the Pentax Award for Geisai #10. It was a wonderful surprise and slightly nerve wrecking to get up on stage in front of so many people and be interviewed. But I`m really grateful for the experience and Ill never forget it.

A Note on Photoshop

From a previous version of this blog
When I started working on this, a few years ago I wanted to use different film stock and different processes for different areas of a piece. If a building was old or neglected, I would shoot it on really cheap, old or preferably well out of date film and have it processed in the cheapest, worst looking one hour photo stand I could find. If a building looked new or trendy I would shoot it on good film processed properly. I would also use different films with different characteristics, cross processing, filters etc... all to bestow many different visual feels to a piece.
Now of course I shoot digitally. I had aesthetic reservations about this at first but nowadays I print all the photos less then half of the original 6x4 size and I find it hard to tell the difference when they are so small.
Which brings me to photoshop...
I get questions all the time about how much photoshop I use on my pieces?
Well... very little actually. They are all run through photoshop and sized so that I can put together a quick model in the computer... just to see if the piece works or not. I do use photoshop to simulate the look of various films and processes as I explained above and if there is a random leg or hand that has found its way into a picture then i clone it out... but Im usually very careful about that when Im shooting. In a few rare cases, when there is a large object that is moving quickly;And it is important for the composition I will size down part of it (almost always the front surface) from a larger picture and then put it in. Once I`m happy with the piece then I resize the pictures for printing and arrange them for the printer.

Some Background Ramblings Part 2

From a previous version of this blog

About the images.

Firstly, Why so many pictures? I`ve been asked this many times, andthere are many reasons. The technique attracts me because it gives me far far more control in creating the overall image. I am afforded the use of a full range of photographic devices within any one piece and am constrained only by the physical realities of the scene I have chosen. I leave the buildings where they are, the roads don't lead off in imaginary directions and if there`s a pole or a lamppost interfering with the composition I try to shoot around it. The changes that occur in my work are real ones. Time of day, the weather, the movement of people and vehicles all conspire with the camera`s many functions to make the overall image as dynamic (or static) as possible. It`s pushing it to call the work documentary and Im not trying to sell it as such but consider that within one fabricated piece, there are several - often many hundred photographs that remain faithful to the moment in which they were shot. As such, my pieces are representations of the many actual realities of a scene. The second reason for shooting so much is more personal. when I was in photography school we were thought to compose, light, shoot, process and display in a thoroughly professional manner. I often found myself dissatisfied with my work though. I felt that I was creating little; rather I was applying accepted visual rules to my own ideas. I felt that I was learning to shoot through other people's eyes and little of my work seemed personal to me. It was like flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine, or any magazine with advertising shots, or looking in the window of a modern portrait studio. I have no problem with any of these genres of photography. They all have their merits and many of my own photographic heroes have excelled in one or all of them. But I found them too clean. We shot clean, processed clean and touched up.... clean, ending up with images that were just shadows, worse - misleading and idealized illusions of real situations or real people . For me they did`nt seem to represent anything. Here`s my point... I realize that I manipulate my images, indeed, my work is quite obviously a fabrication, it does not try to trick anyone in this regard. But it is not an idealized fabrication. It is a complicated, untidy and often flawed version of reality which to my eyes has much truth to it and is far more human. We live in unbelievably complicated times. We are bombarded from everywhere by sounds, imagery and information of all sorts. I want to create imagery that betrays at least a sense of this subtle chaos that often rules us. I dont claim that any one of my images is intended as a simple metaphor for the complexity or untidiness of human society, yet for me at least, the metaphor is present and it is one of the stars I steer by.
The second obvious fact about my work is that it all revolves around cities, and different cities at that. It is difficult to shoot a sustained photographic project, set loosely and in so many different locations and consider it a cohesive body of work, let alone one that actually means anything; Yet this is what I wish to achieve and in time I hope that the breadth of the work will contribute much to that meaning. The first reason for choosing cities is simply that they intrigue me. The second reason is that they are the best fit to my technique . The variety of lighting conditions, the changing scenery and the physical aspects all play well into my schemes for using different media and interpretations for different areas within a piece. This for me is a very important thing . People may like or dislike my work, but none I think can claim that it is not visually engaging. I have seen supporters and detractors alike linger over these pieces, taking time to absorb them. The work demands more effort from the observer as good work should! And, I hope, it rewards in full. I`m not detracting from conventional single image photography, not at all! Good work is good work and I have seen amazing work in galleries all over the world by photographers I could only hope to emulate. But I`ve often seen work that is visually flat and dimensionless and worse... repetitive. And this I refuse to add to. The third reason is equally important and relates both to the construction of the work and the metaphorical aspect I addressed earlier. Cities are in themselves simply an amalgamation of millions of individual components and individuals that combined, amount to a visual, cultural and physical expression that is far greater then the sum of its parts and just as unique as any of them. Not dissimilar to joiners if you follow? Cities are held together physically by synthetic adhesives; And socially by pre-established rules and day to day - moment to moment decisions. The construction of joiners as an artistic expression is not so different in my opinion. As I said earlier, I find the joiner a suitable metaphor for the complicated and untidy nature of human society. But I also think it is an apt metaphor for the physical and social aspects of the urban condition. The final reason I shoot cities is their relevance. As of late 2005 more then half of us live in cities. This is the first time in history when the predominant mode of human habitation has been urban. The world is getting smaller while we are multiplying. Our cities are slowly becoming more and more multicultural. I have set this project in a variety of cities around the world, but I have never intended it to be a kind of showcase or travelogue. I look at cities as a phenomenon and each location is a different color on a different part of the spectrum of that phenomenon. The location of the image is never given in the title, though some may be obvious. The work simply tries to take in as many models and flavors of urban life as it can. Diversity and change is rooted in the DNA of each piece but also in the project as a whole. I hope to continue and expand on this as I produce more work and take in more locations.

Some Background Ramblings Part 1

From a previous version of this blog
A bit of background.

I use a technique that I have tailored to meet my own ends. I'm certainly not the first to use it but I did mould it over time to achieve my own vision. The first piece I shot was actually meant to be the only one. When I was in photography school I rented this tiny place in downtown Vancouver. It was the size of a small hotel room... but I took it because I fell in love with the view and I knew that someday I would come up with a way to capture it. Over the course of a year that view of the Vancouver skyline was shot on every media with every lens I could lay my hands on.. Then one day I decided to shoot a joiner, showing the passage of a single day from sunrise to moonrise, encapsulated in the view from my balcony. It was a simple architectural piece... it looked... architectural and it went down very well. I had only expected to do this once but I never felt that I had done the scene justice. I re-shot it; this time with a longer lens and taking more pictures. Better but still messy I sat on it for a few months and realized that at the back of my mind I was assimilating and tossing around the various things I had done shooting the first two. Using varied focal lengths, speeds, apertures; thinking on how the individual photographs joined together? I devised a set of rules for myself and decided to try it again on a different scene. After some searching I found one. However it was obvious to me that the focal point of the composition was empty The answer was to put a person there. And here is where this project really kicked off, though I did not know it for some time. It was when I was building the image that I realized that the dramatic piece I had set out to make had become a narrative one. I had created a world around a character, and that idea intrigued me. Since then I have broadly categorized my pieces into architecturally or narratively driven ones. I think I may come into some criticism for not beginning this project from a fixed idea and proceeding to explore it. But it was largely born of experiment. Partly through my attempts to master and refine a technique but also perhaps through my search for something to say. I started shooting these pieces because I thought they looked interesting, simple as that. They had no inherent meaning that was obvious to me, not at first. I grew more and more intrigued by them however, which made me wonder?