Unfortunately I left Japan for a few weeks, due to nuclear fears and family pressure, before coming back to work at the beginning of April. Life goes on, or tries to, for the refugees up North.

I was invited yesterday to the opening ceremony of a photography exhibition by Aki Tanaka at Tosei Gallery in the Nakano area. There I met Kunihiro Takahashi, CEO of the gallery and of the publishing company – a very dynamic and cheerful guy, focused on analogic photography. His face lit up when I told him that the picture on my business card was shot on film 6 years ago, in contrast to with his disappointment when I admitted that I take only digital pictures now… But his affection for film photography conducted him to select very talented film photographers, most of them on close to retirement (if photographers do retire, I am not sure about that…).

After asking me if I liked the book I was looking at, he simply gave it to me as a gift. I had known him for only 10 minutes and he offered me one of the books he was supposed to sell in the bookshop. So nice of him. 高橋さん、ありがとう！

Here are some pictures of this book, 1970年代NIPPON (Seventies in Japan) by Kazuo Kitai. I did not know this photographer, but now I am looking forward to meeting him at his next exhibition in the gallery in January 2012. The distance and the composition of his pictures reminds me Raymond Depardon’s in the 80′s. There are numerous books in Japan with black and white film pictures, but few are this interesting.

More books by Kazuo Kitai on Japan exposure.

A nice review of the “Spanish nights” book by Street Level Japan.

My pictures of the young Afghan migrants in Paris and the elections campaign in Japan will be displayed until the 6th of December in a slideshow at the Bodega. This event is organized by my Melon Rouge photo agency, specialized in pictures from Asia and which I recently affiliated to.

More about the PhotoPhnomPenh festival here.

More about Melon Rouge here.

The slideshow will be held from 6.30pm till 8.30pm and it would be better to book your seat in advance here (the entrance is free).

The venue is Waseda University Campus (早稲田大学),in the big auditorium (大講堂, 1F-3F) of the Okuma Memorial Auditorium (Bat. 21, 大隈記念講堂) .
It’a 5min walk from Waseda station on the Tozai line. Here is the link to the access map.

The program of the slideshow is here (2nd slideshow).

Only 8 months after his last exhibition in the same gallery, Araki-san is coming back to Rat Hole Gallery (Tokyo, Omotesando) with an incredible collection of 6000 polas. Very impressive. His favorites themes are there again : flowers, bondage, skies, food, karaoke and many naked women, of course. Many amazing details, very lively and powerful exhibition.

Single pictures are for sale, 42,000 Yens. Frames containing from 25 to 100 polas are also available, between 1,000,000 Yens and 3,000,000 Yens. A very nice book (ltd edition 1500 ex.) is also for sale (13,000 Yens).

Gallery and exhibition infos :

Address : B1F, 5-5-3 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062
Phone: 03-6419-3581
Website : http://www.ratholegallery.com

Exhibition schedule : July 17 〜 August 20 2009
Opening hours : 12a.m. til 8p.m (closed on monday)

Entrance fee : free