Conversation : Eric Rechsteiner about Sha-Do Collective in Japan

I had a conversation in Tokyo with Eric Rechsteiner , french photographer based in Japan since many years, we talked about the Sha-Do collective of photographers which has been created recently and explore the collaboration between European Photographers (Eric Rechsteiner, David Coll Blanco andAndroniki Christodoulou) with Japanese Photographers (Aida NoriyukiandOgawaYasuhiro ), the interesting thing among the other is that the collective is perhaps the first in Japan and Asia....Eric spoke in behalf of the others and he was kind to tell me more about it.Here the conversation i had with Eric Rechsteiner:

© Eric Rechsteiner

DM: I like the idea to see european photographer and japanese photographer working together, I can imagine is not easy because of the different interpretation of photojournalism , tell me morehow the project started and what are thechallenges.

ER: at the beginning we're a group of photographers living and working in Tokyo and sharing the desire to do things with others and I'm not sure we can divide photographers in two groups, Japanese and Europeans. Each photographer,whatever its nationality, has its own approach of photography. Andphotojournalism is only one of the different ways we're working on. David CollBlanco for example works sometimes as a photojournalist for news agency but has avery artistic, almost abstract, approach in his personal projects.

© Ogawa Yasuhiro

DM: When Henri Cartier-Bresson startedMagnum he told "Magnum is a community of thought,a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually". Are these values stillstrong among your Collective?

ER: too big names for a comparison ! But yes, at least we can say that we share curiosity about what's going on in the world and in a way a common thought. A collective project implies to share with others and to learn from others.

© David Coll Blanco

DM: I was in Tokyo while you with the other were shooting at the fashion week and you told me about the project on Tokyo Bay (which can become the site for the 2016 Olympic Games), how u decide to move in a common project?

ER: that's a good question because it's not an easy thing to do. We share common interest on many topics but we also understand that a good way to be all motivated about a long term project is to have the money that goes with it. Without source of funding it's of course difficult to keep the troops motivated for very long.Yes, Tokyo is a candidate city for the 2016 Olympic and as we have in mind to work on different aspects of the games planed around the Tokyo Bay area, we're actually looking for sponsors. We're also trying to upload new images on our website every month, mostly news topics. After the Japan fashion week in Tokyo, we photographed the cherry blossoms (Hanami) and are now working on the severe economical crisis that is hitting Japan.

© Aida Noriyuki

DM: All the photographers distribute their work through other agencies in the world, is that can create a conflict?

ER: Yes, almost all of us are linked to a photo agency, but we're not in conflict because - even if we all have a documentary background - we don't do exactly the same type of work: each photographer has its own way, its own style. And our website is a platform to promote the work of each of us.

© Androniki Christodoulou

DM : How a collective moves nowadays? As it is merely a cultural experience do you aim to have some Foundations and cultural sponsorship in order to promote exhibitions, books and projects ?

ER:Our first photo exhibition, "Tokyo Youth" last December was sponsored by japanese memory card maker Sandisk. We would like to convince them to follow us again but, as you know, it's really tough time for sponsorship hunting...As for the Tokyo Bay project, we're hoping to get money from the Tokyo metropolitan government.

DM: How Japanese media reacting to the Collective?

ER: As I was saying, people are usually curious and interested by the idea but we are going to launch our website "for real", here in Japan and overseas, only next week, so I'll be able to answer this question only in a while.

DM: What is your goal for the future ? Any projects?

ER: 2009 is a tough year for the photo business but maybe also a good opportunity to promote different types of work. So we would like to present the group in Perpignan next September, it's a bit far from home but we'll try to go there!

Conversation : Bevis Fusha

I am posting another conversation which I had with Bevis Fusha recently. Bevis Fusha is one of the most interesting photographer of so called " New Europe", coming from Albania Bevis has witnessed and reported the slow and complicate change of his country. He has focus his work in different social aspect also experimenting concept topics. He also represented by Regina Anzenberger Agency. Again as for Max Sher I do like to speak about photographers who can develop and see something different in the countries they are born, something that is for many photographers quite challenging.
Here the conversation with Bevis:
DM: You are perhaps one of the few who could translate the last historical
period of your country into photographs although you were born in a
photographer's family what were the most difficult thing to face when you
start to take photos?
BF:I grew up in the dark room of our small apartment in the center of Tirana.
I spent my childhood in the corner of the room, under the pale red light
impatiently waiting for my father to finish his work so I could leave and
play outside with my bike. My interest in photography started in the
adolescent years. Actually, during those year, photographing people
seemed boring and very ordinary for me, something that anyone in the world
could do. Our house was always filled with ORWO films, Kodak slides, 35
mm cameras, medium format, large format, photo papers, dryers, solvents
and everything else that was in the function of the image. My father,
Besim Fusha, was one of the best and most valued photographer of his time
and I would like to add that he was one of the most intelligent who had
the ability to unintentionally serve the communist regime this way
providing for his family by using a 50 mm objective and a Practica ML.
During that time I found my self looking at images more, and looking means
a lot, more than technically viewing the camera. What I can say is that
aroun 1995 I started using Canon F1 camera and I found no difficulties
getting used to it, meaning technically. It was part of the family.
Taking the camera in my hands, professionally, was natural and happened
very quickly.

DM: I believe you have a good numbers of projects done, my favorites are
"A slow motion death" and "Isolation" although I do like your "color" approach in some other projects.
What make you "think" in black and white and in "color"?
BF:Photography is a multi dimentional and flexible generator of my life. My
educational relationship has been connected to the camera. It has taken
many years for me to create a powerful visual language. The camera itself
has become an expressive tool these last 10 years, to present events that
are connected to the society I live in and are of genuin interest of mine.
In my begginings I used color film because I felt that with black and
white I had already created a close relationship to the point that it had
become personal and familiar. Coloristic memory was very important as a
shortcut of humanistic association.

DM: How you see photojournalism these days?
BF:In a way it is interesting. I believe that the colective interests of the
photographers have been transformed in an uncontrolled organic process.
Personal and individual interests are those that attempt to keep
photojournalism unaffected. There will be advancements in the technical
distribution of information in a world thatis getting smaller and there
will be attempts to break away from regulations set by the predecessors.
There won't be any avanguard changes unless the old system can be
infiltrated. The difficulty is in the fact that all media is influenced,
it is very obvious. Almost all publishers, authors, amateur or
professional have an agenda, a mission. There are no more people who do
something with naivety. It seems that naivety has been burried in
primitive centuries. Any agenda, is either spiritual, religious,
political or corporation, or a complicated combination of these elements.
The worst scenario is when it is all the above, where photography many
times willingly or unwillingly becomes a manipulated searvant. I think
that a triumphant formula for the future would be a sensitive subject
presentation with a perfect esthetic-visual storytelling. Photography has
always been a good way to allow the viewer to interpret the inside of what
he/she sees. Each person takes what they want from an image and in
successful cases, all of us take away what we should. The goal will be
achieved by hyperbolizing the core.

DM: I would like if you speak more about Albania and how mean to work
there and what is going on.
BF:My photography is not specifically connected with the geography of places,

even though my major contribution is in Albania, the place of my origin
and where I currently live. I have been and still am an outside vision of
reality, a wanderer. In each journey photography flows as an element of
my presentation. My id is untouchable. It remains with me and exist as a
result of my logic. In journeys photography holds a second place. First
of all there is my facing of the world, and then what I learn, which feeds
my photography. Distances and spaces fill me with fear, photography helps
me familiarize myself with what I learn and leave behind. Such
photographic observation comes instinctively to me. It is traces of my
childhood that come back in more mature steps, as the years go by. In the
beginning, when I entered the media market, I was looking for my fame and
name, but nowadays, my motives are different. I am a spectator, a
messenger, a murderer of the moment that tries to give life to eternity. I
feel that my duty as a messenger is to continue forward and be as
invisible and unimportant as possible. Motivation, determination,
patience, curiosity and the truth are some elements that keep you attached
to the photographic image. The photography that I capture is often
anti-television in its structure, in an attempt to oppose the enormous
indoctrination that TV is feeding our lives, by transmitting to us news
and images that have a superficial meaning. Albania has a small number of
photographers, therefore "my war" takes on a sublime meaning. Also, I
prefer to believe in the uniqueness of things in life. Nothing can be
repeated in a photo, even when moments are recreated. I don't discover
the importance of the photo at the moment of capture, but after, while I
feel it as it is. What photo can be created as absolutely perfect? On
the contrary, what is not photographed is what contains the DNA of the
absolute and perfect. I have doubts of the rightful moment of an image.
I think that values in time are clearly understandable in the hundreds of
seconds and achieve their importance in their solitude. Of course there
are ceses when I go back to subjects and follow them for some time, for
other interests, and I never find the same situations, there is always a
continuous movement. Also, it should be kept in mind that I use
photography to document something, I do not attempt to be an artist and I
do not worry to find the specifying category. I don't believe in the
elite, but the individuals. The Albanian society has surprised me with
its paradoxes, with completely medevial phenomenons that would make it
noticible in all Europe. I think that it is a good place to further study
what awes me. I want to be a witness of what I see and all this is also a
question to myself and to what I share with my photography. I worry of
what I will leave behind to the coming generations, I don't know how to
respect the present but the future and I am a fanatic visionary.
Photography has the most universal and primary role in communication,
something I use and want to go deeper in. I still have faith of the value
of photography and always will. I would like to be absolute in this.

DM: What is your next project ?
BF:I am working on a project that will be quite boring and will have also a
boring exhibition. It will be the capturing of very ordinary, unimportant
places for anyone, almost places where nothing happens, but hide a
dimentinal path, a gate toward death. This is a project that is distant
and I have overcome some difficulties that have forced me to slowly work
on it. Maybe I won't be able to finish it in the time I have set for
myself.

Conversation : Max Sher

I am posting another conversation this time with Russian Photographer Max Sher which is represented by Agency Anzenberger. I have met Max Sher in Vienna during the presentation of book East edited by Regina Anzenberger , the book also featured his work on Kommunalka. Working and be represented by the same agency is an opportunity for me to have a better contact and perhaps also the spirit to ask some questions "acting" like a journalist... but

nevertheless i think is useful to understand a photography through the words of the photographer who decide to be there, see and decide to shoot a photo. The questions are related to the work and to the intent of the work.
I indeed like to write about photographers which are able to focus on their country of origin, something which is (especially for me) quite difficult. When you grow up in a place you start to see incredible things becoming normal and therefore to shoot well is an hard task. Not for Max Sher which has focused most of his work in the country he was born, depicting a certain intimancy and approaching the topics with a good cultural knowledge.
Here the conversation I had with Max Sher:
DM: Your work is mostly done in Russia and in different small new republics, I found the approach very intimate.
Is a way for you to look back at the history of your country or perhaps to report the many social aspect of Russia?
MS: I am actually trying to combine both: reporting on social issues but seeing them through a slightly different perspective. I am interested in how things that happened in the past still affect people living today. I am indeed working mostly in Russia and former Soviet Union as I am more familiar with the history of my country, its social and cultural intricacies and various aspects of its life.

DM: In the book East published by Regina Anzenberger you featured one of my favorite project : Kommunalka, as you describe
is one of the failed experiment of Russia and I can see how involved you were in the project. Tell me more about it.
MS: Yes, this is one of the examples of what I was saying about my socio-historical interest. Kommunalka (an abbreviation of Kommunalnaya Kvartira, literally Communal Apartment) means a single flat shared by more than one family. It is a Soviet phenomenon that is pretty much in place here and that will live on for many years to come. It was forcibly created by the Communists using the confiscated private property to pursue two goals: make the working class - the Soviets' main political base - feel the alleged triumph of the social justice (workers may now live in luxury high class flats!) and, at the same time, create a new man - deprived of the sense of property and putting community interests above self. This experiment was a dramatic failure. Instead of a new lifestyle of mutual help and community spirit the kommunalkas gave way to social alienation, neglect, apathy and eternal neighborhood conflicts. The word kommunalka in Russian has a strong negative connotation and is associated with filth, scandals, cramped space and lack of privacy.

DM: I was curious to know more about the project done in Venice, is a "literature" feature, you visited places describe in the
narrative of Joseph Brodsky, is a poetical journey which connect you to Italy. Tell me more about the motivation to experiment such a thing:
MS: Well, that was not really a "project" in a proper sense but an attempt to convey the moods, thoughts and feelings expressed by the Russian emigré poet and Nobel Laureate in Literature Joseph Brodsky in his English-language essay Watermark set in Venice but treating subjects such as beauty, creativity, humanity, tenderness and human existence. Joseph Brodsky was born into a family of a photographer in St.Petersburg. The latter is often dubbed Venice of the North and many of those who were born or grew up here (including my humble self) want to compare it to the original. For Brodsky, when he lived in the totalitarian Soviet Union persecuted by the authorities and unable to travel abroad, Venice was a sort of a personal vow - once free, he wanted to come there immediately to touch his dream. He later came there every December for 17 years in a row, after which he wrote his essay Watermark. In Russian, its name was replaced with Embankment of the Incurables. The point is that the view from this embankment to the opposite island of Giudecca, according to many, is one of the most reminiscent of St.Petersburg.

DM: Where documentative photography is going nowadays?
MS: The classic photojournalism is dying, isn't it? The printed press has less and less space for photojournalists and less and less money. We have to find new ways to tell the stories we consider important, not only in terms of technology but in terms of the means of expression as well. Since quite some time, photojournalism has been evolving towards a more intimate, personal and thoughtful approach with editing becoming ever more important because virtually everyone can now take good pictures, eh? :)

More from Max Sher also in his blog

Conversation : Philipp Horak

I would like to introduce a photographer and ask some questions, this first time i posted a conversation with Philipp Horak, Austrian photographer affiliated with Anzenberger Agency in Vienna. Philipp Horak work as editorial, corporate and advertising photography and also working in personal projects such as a book on Shaolin and an essay on Black Austria. I have a great respect for Philipp's work and happy to share a friendship with him.
DM : What i admire of your work is how you can combine reportage and portrait with the same intensity and creativity using an hasselblad which is, for my personal experience, not an easy camera to compose, how did it happened to start to work with this camera?
PH: First i start with a mamyia RZ. I used this camera for portraits and for reportages.But i soon switch to Hasselblad due the easier handling of the camera. Since then i always worked with an Hasselblad adapting my work to this great camera.
DM: I was very curious to see how you develop your stories, for example the essay on the paris dakar race, it seems you start
with the idea to follow the race but in the end you start to follow the real life of this part of africa which is often forgotten.Tell me more about it.

PH: I was working for 8 years as a photographer. i worked for newspapers and commercial. everything was fine but suddenly my private live changed and i decided to accept an offer of a director which asked me to be part of the crew of his film on the Paris-Dakar , took me one day to recognize as a great experience for my life, follow the race but also switch my life into 4 months in the desert , was everything new for me. The reportage followed my life... in the beginning i was on track with the race but then i start to follow the daily life of the villages, as well with my life changing with a different curiosity .
DM: Portraits are one of the most important topic of your job, is amazing how you face the subject, expecially politicians which are often seen without their typical institutional mask . In Particular Heinz Fisher president of Austria, a photo of him behind the plant of his office. How did you convince him to set up the portrait like that?

PH: I just told him he should stand there - and he did it- I dont know why he did it.... If i would be a president i wouldnt do it but sometime i am really wondering why people are doing things like this..... not that I think they are silly but I wonder if they know to be front of the media sometimes.... In Austria especially where politicians are quite weird sometimes....
DM: Last question, tell me more about your new project of portraits of Asylum seekers in Austria from which three photos appear at the end of this post
PH: It is always a big shock when you observe what a rich country like Austria is doing with "immigrants". Especially the government is always explaining to us that we need an higher "quality" people in our land. I met doctors from Syria waiting for two years to be recognized for an asylium... I do hope they will understand that the world we live belongs to everybody....