[HN Gopher] The Swiss wanderer who found the soul of 1950s Japan
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The Swiss wanderer who found the soul of 1950s Japan
Author : Thevet
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-12-22 20:42 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| the first photo especially is breathtaking
| unnouinceput wrote:
| I found the 6th to be the breathtaking one for me
| 1cvmask wrote:
| It's pictures like this that made me fall in love with National
| Geographic. The fortunes that were spent documenting different
| parts of the world when a picture really brought color to life
| even though they were black and white photos for a very long long
| time.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2013/dec/06/natio...
| enaaem wrote:
| Old analog pictures have a really nice quality to them. Colours
| are rich and vibrant without looking too fake. They are often
| taken on 35 mm film, which means a natural shallow dept off
| field.
|
| I really enjoy browsing through the box of old pictures from my
| youth. Everyone above 30 probably has their youth snapped on
| film, while most pics nowadays are shot on phones. I wonder how
| someone 40 years in the future would look back at 2021 iPhone
| pictures of themselves?
| m_st wrote:
| They'll be overwhelmed because there are so many photos and
| movies. I honestly already struggle to share them all with my
| kids aged 13 and younger.
| teekert wrote:
| "I wonder how someone 40 years in the future would look back at
| 2021 iPhone pictures of themselves? "
|
| I make so many pics and videos that I really hope it will be
| something like this: "Hey locally run AI that guards my data
| and privacy, please show me about 100 pictures and videos of
| holidays when the kids were in the age of 5-10, project them on
| the wall.", "Yes, that one in the mountains is nice, where is
| that? Can you show me some more of that holiday?", "How about
| some videos taken around that era in and around the house?"
| "Did we have a dog back then?" "Ah yes, there is Bello, what a
| nice dog that was, when did he die?" [Star Trek computer voice:
| "last picture of Bello was may 5 2014".]
|
| No way I'm ever going to sort this mess manually. TBH, a simple
| import in Shotwell already works wonders, and I absolutely love
| the "For You" section in "Photos" on my iPhone, I can get lost
| in there for a long time, but that's just a bit too much tied
| to Apple for my taste though, I'll be archiving all those files
| at some point (to 2 local hdds and then rsync them off-site
| (aka "my parent's house")).
|
| Edit: Maybe, at some point, you can construct an interactive
| narrative about your life like done in The Orville in "Lasting
| Impressions" [0]. Why are you all so negative about the future
| people, you need more Star Trek (or The Orville) in your life
| ;) Nobody is going to get overwhelmed, we're creating a rich
| source of information about ourselves and the time we live in,
| which we will probably never really consume as a series of
| Photographs, that sounds pretty boring indeed, we can do
| better, show some creativity!
|
| [0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826096/
| ekianjo wrote:
| AI can't even be bothered to do half-reliable text
| translations, seriously doubt that 40 years from now it will
| work half as well as we imagine it to be. After all, we all
| imagined back in in the 80s that we would have flying cars
| and robots around us by 2020's - we should learn that we are
| constantly bad predictors and completely off the mark.
| huntertwo wrote:
| While I agree that the expectations for AI are too high, I
| think the use case described is almost achievable with
| today's tech. It's just language processing to process the
| request (User wants to see dog around this time period in
| this location) and finding relevant images (find pictures
| with dog with exif data that matches time period and
| location).
| teekert wrote:
| No way. The Photos section of the iPhone Photos app is
| already almost there. It makes the nicest videos from live
| photos (.heic), with music and it chooses the nice moments
| by itself. Maybe this not-super-critical-and-
| necessarily-100%-specific-part is where AI already shines.
| The "For You" content has complicated titles like
| "$kid'sName spring 2020" or "A day in the park, summer
| 2021" or "Happiness". 40 years is a lot.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I used to print a selection of my iPhone pictures every few
| months or so, but the print shop went under and now I'm stuck
| :/
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Having spent lots of time editing, restoring photos from my
| family that go back over 100 years, I have watched the
| evolution of the "consumer camera" (at least as it relates to
| the kind typically in the possession of the midwest working
| class).
|
| Oldest photo are studio photos (oldest being a tintype, others
| ... collodion?). Except for the tintype the quality is
| generally quite nice. Studio lit, static subjects.
|
| Then come the 1920's and a decade of non-studio, candid photos
| that appear to have been shot on a Brownie-style box camera.
| These are fairly poor quality. In some cases though they are
| poorly framed (subjects too far from the camera) and so it is
| as much the fault of the operator as the poor camera. Photos
| are exclusively outdoors.
|
| A handful of studio photos are peppered in these decades, now
| with school graduation photos, maybe a wedding photo shot
| professionally. These are quite nice. Maybe the nicest of the
| first 100 years of photos?
|
| Somewhere in the 30's though B&W photos taken on consumer gear
| begin to appear that are much better in quality. I suspect
| we've moved past the box-camera and to something more like the
| folding-style Kodak with better optics. I like this period of
| candid photos the best -- right up until the 40's and 50's.
|
| Suddenly though, mid-Century, the photo collection goes to
| color, some of them Polaroids. Oh wow the quality falls right
| off again. We're back to the Brownie box-camera in terms of
| image sharpness, clarity. I think we, as consumers, traded
| quality for color and instant processing.
|
| By the time I am old enough to take pictures (70's) I remember
| using a Kodak Instamatic (135 film?). Also poor. We had flash
| of course by then so many more photos go indoors.
|
| My mother sometime in the 70's got a Canon AE-1 so 35mm and
| decent lens (no doubt the kit "nifty 50") make for some of the
| best amateur photos of the century for our family photos.
|
| It is curious that the pattern would sort of repeat in the 21st
| Century as I switched to digital. I had access early on to
| digital cameras (part of my job) so I was an early adopter.
| When they became affordable I began buying and upgrading
| through a few lines of nice Canon point-and-shoot cameras. This
| was the beginning of the "megapixel wars". The quality of the
| images began to get quite nice -- Canon optics, aperture-
| priority, ability to adjust exposure bias...
|
| And then sadly, the quality regressed since we lazily turned to
| relaying on the iPhone camera and early on it was worse than
| that of the nice Canon cameras. (My wife though had graduated
| to a Canon Rebel around this time and held on to using it for a
| while so that many of our vacation photos started to surpass
| those taken with my mother's 35mm.)
|
| As generations of iPhones improved their camera quality,
| eventually all the Canon gear got left at home since the photo
| quality of the modern iPhone was "good enough" at last. Playing
| with lenses, depth of field (no, not the fakey "portrait" kind
| of computational depth of field) are gone however -- I suspect
| not likely to return. The thinness of the phone means we're not
| likely ever to see larger apertures where depth of field
| becomes meaningful.
|
| I started to get into Micro-4/3 for a bit, recently picked up a
| Sony mirrorless, but I suspect the days of automatically
| strapping on a dedicated camera when we head out to hike,
| vacation, are now a thing of the past.
|
| We'll see.
| askin4it wrote:
| I'd like to restore some old faded color photos. Any advice
| on software/techniques?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I do it manually and fully on a desktop Macintosh.
|
| It begins with scanning at high DPI on a flatbed scanner. A
| mid-range Epson and 600 DPI is more than adequate for old
| photos, I find.
|
| The raw scan then gets pulled into the photo editing
| software. Levels are the most important thing to adjust
| (again, manually). Playing with exposure, shadow level,
| highlight levels -- always trying to get a good dynamic
| range from the photo (not pulled down so dark you lose
| shadow detail, not pulling too bright that you clip/bloom
| the highlights).
|
| I like to try then to remove dust specks, scratches and
| other defects to try to make my digital version superior to
| the original. For this step I myself rely on an older
| version of Apple's Photos app (from like High Sierra?)
| because the retouch tool is quite fast in that version of
| Photos (the retouch tool has since fallen way off in speed,
| usability. I believe however I am missing the Brightness
| adjustment in this older version of Photos, that is
| unfortunate).
|
| Adobe Lightroom though is still I believe the gold-standard
| for photo-editing apps. No doubt they have an excellent
| retouch tool (but I refuse to pay an annual subscription
| for software). But there are plenty of other apps that will
| give you all the photo editing capabilities you might want.
| I have Pixelmator Pro and Affinity Photo but I have not
| tried to learn either with regard to restoring old photos.
| They are probably more than capable. Additionally I have
| briefly played with apps that focus on B&W (grayscale)
| images and offer a rich palette of tools that focus on
| adjusting "tone" and other things I can't quite grok but
| would like to explore more.
| armadsen wrote:
| Ha, I'm reading this post on vacation in the lobby of a hotel
| with my (film!) camera in a bag on my body.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| Ive actually just started to take the time, once a year, to go
| through all my phone photos, and print out a couple hundred of
| them and put them in a photo album. I suspect they'll still be
| around when me and my iCloud account are long gone, for the
| grandkids to discover in their parents basement.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > They are often taken on 35 mm film, which means a natural
| shallow dept off field
|
| Not to be too nitpicky but depth of field is a function of
| focal length and aperture size, the film itself is irrelevant.
| It's just as easy to achieve on digital, not as common on crop
| sensor sizes (because those introduce a focal length
| multiplier, thus you need a very light and wide open lens, like
| f/1.8) but a full frame sensor has the same depth of field as a
| 35mm film frame.
| enaaem wrote:
| I understand that. My point is that most personal photos now
| are shot on phones, while in the past everyone shot full
| frame.
| Talanes wrote:
| I'm in the "Everyone above 30" category, and we shot
| disposable, not full frame.
| luaybs wrote:
| These are beautiful
| ekianjo wrote:
| if you cherry pick 10 pictures out of thousands I certainly
| hope those 10 will be beautiful
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| That's called 'editing' and I'm not sure but it sounds like
| you're implying the practice undermines the quality of work
| like photography, when in fact it's arguably a more important
| part of the practice than aiming the camera and releasing the
| shutter.
| antiterra wrote:
| I know it doesn't say 'first' or 'only' to find the soul of 1950s
| Japan, but I sense the idea that Switzerland is the familiar and
| Japan is the exotic. Photography as an art was well established
| at the time within the borders of the country, and there's much
| to discover, such as the work of Hiroshi Hamaya.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I suspect though that a foreigner who _does_ find the country
| exotic will choose subjects to photograph and photograph them
| in a way the "locals" would not. That can be both an
| interesting perspective for those native to the country as well
| as for the the rest of us.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Indeed this is true from my experience... moments of insight
| into beauty (which make me want to take a picture) seem to
| occur much more when I'm away from home.
| jbay808 wrote:
| This is why I love showing tourists around my home city.
| They notice so many special things that have long since
| faded into the background for me.
|
| For example I was taking four Japanese grad students to a
| local park famous for its hikes and waterfalls. But the
| thing that made them jump up and start pointing and taking
| pictures was when a yellow school bus drove by. _Look,
| look! It 's Snoopy! It's a real yellow bus, just like in
| Snoopy!"_
| saghm wrote:
| When my eldest brother was in high school, he did a two-
| week exchange program with a high school in Italy (where
| an Italian student came to stay with us for two weeks,
| and later my brother went and stayed with that student
| and his family for two weeks). I was fairly young at the
| time, but I distinctly remember when all the Italian
| students went out into the city to do some sight-seeing
| and he came back with basically his entire camera roll
| filled with pictures of squirrels, and apparently most of
| his friends had done the same.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| On that note, does anyone know of works coming from the other
| direction? Photographers from East Asia documenting the West
| before the Internet?
| ehnto wrote:
| Hence, photos of the infamous and proliferous vending
| machines.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Are they infamous? Quite frankly after visiting I wish
| there were more of them back home, selling something other
| than soda.
| m0lecules wrote:
| definitely. although one of the hallmarks in a good
| photographer is the ability to find the exotic in the
| mundane.
|
| but now i'm curious how many foreign photographers we're
| missing out on.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| bsrhng wrote:
| Yasujiro Ozu was making films since the 20s.
| askin4it wrote:
| may also be of interest
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/368
| negamax wrote:
| If a headline like "A Japanese wanderer who found the soul of
| France" seems strange to western folks then this headline is just
| a mirror of same absurdity.
| 7402 wrote:
| I find neither of those headlines absurd nor strange, so by the
| rules of logic I guess the above statement is correct -
| although I disagree with the implication that there is
| something wrong with either one.
|
| I'm always fascinated by the insights a thoughtful and serious
| outside observer can bring to a locale or subject.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I would also like to see the photos of 1950s France by a
| Japanese photographer.
| tomcam wrote:
| Part of me agrees completely but the other part of me remembers
| reading Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and feeling that
| he absolutely nailed it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Are you American?
|
| I think it makes sense to pay attention to other people's
| perspective on our own country, because we can get an outside
| perspective while also applying our firsthand knowledge to
| evaluate if they are talking out of their ass.
|
| In this case, the actual article is about a photographer. I
| suspect he didn't actually find the 'soul' of 1950's Japan,
| although I've never been to any Japan, but he did take some
| nice photos.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| _'I always go too far, too deep,' wrote Bischof. 'That is not
| journalistic. I realise that I am not a newspaper reporter. In my
| innermost soul I am still - and always will be - an artist'_
|
| Good! Modern journalism's focus on ethics and rigor over truth
| seems to confuse people and make them think they can't report the
| news. No matter what you report or how, there's no guarantee that
| the truth will out. Your own biases, the reader's biases, the
| editor's pen, the government's censors, and various incentives,
| all conspire to transmogrify the truth. Don't worry about whether
| you're a real journalist, as if it will make any difference. All
| you need to do is share stories and express yourself honestly.
| There's more truth in these artistic photos than there is in an
| entire Sunday edition newspaper.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I would be surprised if the photo-journalists out there grouse
| very much about whether they are being ethical, truthful. I
| would imagine, like the photographer in the article, they all
| see themselves as artists and photographer first. It is surely
| what drew them into the gig.
| suction wrote:
| Not to stray too far off-topic, but is anyone aware of any
| scientific studies on the exaggerated interest in Japan and
| Japanese culture among "nerds" and other social outcasts?
|
| By that I don't mean Cosplayers or Manga fans, but rather the
| "tech" version of nerddom - people who don't follow Manga, Anime,
| or Idols, but are fascinated with anything if it's related to
| Japan.
|
| I guess the most obvious reasons are the myth that "nerds" can
| find sex partners in Japan more easily than in their own culture,
| and the darker fascination of Western Neo-Nazis (like Breivik)
| with Japan's alleged racial purity and chauvinistic nationalism.
| Especially because a mass-murderer has openly stated his deed was
| "inspired" by Japanese culture, I wonder if the connection has
| ever been analysed scientifically.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Diverting the discussion to the subject of the nerd identity is
| always on topic for Hacker News.
|
| I'd say there's several centuries worth of precedent on Western
| interest on Japanese art, history and culture. The US sent
| gunboats to force them to show the goods at one point, when
| they were unwilling to share them.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Asian cultures are just interesting from my POV. Think about
| how the English fascination with Roman ruins embedded all sorts
| of Roman allegory and content into popular culture.
|
| Japan and China has their own stories, histories and empires
| dating back thousands of years, but they just aren't a part of
| western culture and education. It's a novelty for some and a
| passion for others because of the aspect of discovery. I know
| very little about Chinese history, but if you grabbed 100 of my
| not-Chinese peers, I probably know more than 90 of them.
| suction wrote:
| I also find them interesting, but what interests me is why
| Japan, not China, Thailand, Korea, or Malaysia is the most
| interesting to "nerds".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I guess the most obvious reasons are the myth that "nerds"
| can find sex partners in Japan more easily than in their own
| culture
|
| I believe that is part of it, honestly. But I wouldn't present
| it exactly that way. I think instead that there are many
| American males that feel threatened by the assertive,
| independent American woman. Perhaps beginning with "women's
| lib" in the 1970's?
|
| Asian culture appears to paint a picture of a submissive female
| role that is non-threatening, in fact deferential to the male.
| Even in terms of appearances the stereotypical Asian female has
| long hair "befitting a woman" and wears traditional feminine
| clothing.
|
| But I think there of course is another kind of interest in
| Japanese culture that is not defined by sex roles, a
| fascination I have myself about Japan.
|
| I think it is other-worldly to this Westerner. Food is foreign
| but delicious. Society is structured in a way that keeps order.
| Strict social rules but flexibility toward foreigners who are
| unused to these rules (and apparently allowances for the
| behavior of drunks as well?).
|
| I think too many of us see modern Japan as a foil to our own
| failing societies as we head into an unknown future. Tokyo with
| public transportation and, as I said, strict social rules, has
| kept a mostly sane and functioning metropolis together. As we
| look to our own cities in the U.S. growing to Tokyo-like
| proportions we can hope that there is a way forward ... if we
| can only be more like Japan.
|
| Anyway, that is my take on it.
| saltcured wrote:
| If you can step away from this exotic/erotic axis and consider
| your question again, I would suggest also thinking about other
| archetypes and stereotypes visible in Japanese history and pop
| art accessible to westerners. Many of these seem to have
| obvious appeal to "nerds" and social outcasts.
|
| Among many things represented there are: intense stoicism,
| quiet suffering, sacrifice, and discipline; intense devotion
| and high craft; and individuals trying to contain and balance
| their personal issues within a high pressure society expecting
| obedience and conformity. In many exported stories, there is
| also a strong hint that in spite of all this, Japanese culture
| somehow allows for very eccentric (geeky?) characters to carve
| out a pocket world where their obsessions become almost
| respected in the same way as traditional disciplines. A sort of
| meta-discipline focused on the process of refinement itself...
| [deleted]
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I think such a study would not reveal anything but rather
| mundane truths.
|
| > By that I don't mean Cosplayers or Manga fans, but rather the
| "tech" version of nerddom - people who don't follow Manga,
| Anime, or Idols, but are fascinated with anything if it's
| related to Japan.
|
| For some reason, you are putting up a strong separation here
| that I am not sure actually exists in real life. People don't
| compartmentalize their hobbies and remaining interests into two
| separate buckets that have nothing to do with each other.
|
| I find it reasonable both that:
|
| - People who watch anime or read manga all day are more likely
| to notice, upvote, and share a story about Japan just due to
| the proximity of language.
|
| - "Nerds" as you put it are more likely to be into anime or
| manga in the first place.
|
| Given these two, it follows that nerds are more likely to share
| general stories about Japan without any of the much darker
| reasons you seem to posit.
|
| Similarly, I would also find it reasonable that someone
| listening to and practicing Euro-centric music all day is more
| likely to share stories that have a mainly Euro-centric
| context.
| ilamont wrote:
| Another European photographer working in postwar Japan was the
| late Italian academic and alpinist Fosco Maraini. His book
| _Meeting with Japan_ (1960) is one of the greatest cultural
| analyses I 've ever read. While his photos aren't as striking as
| TFA, the subjects and his writing capture the multiple
| transitions taking place in the country starting during the war
| (where he lived, including several years as a civilian POW) and
| during the 1950s. The English edition (translated from Italian)
| is out of print but worth purchasing if you can find a copy.
|
| Obituary:
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/15/guardianobituar...
| fnord77 wrote:
| he used a rolleiflex TLR medium format camera (the square images)
| and a leica IIIC 35mm.
|
| > Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on 16 May 1954,
| only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in
| Indochina.
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(page generated 2021-12-27 23:01 UTC)