International Projects
Shigata Ga Nai
Between January and July, 1995, I lived with my family in Kyoto, Japan, as the recipient of a Japan - US Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship. My purpose in Japan was to learn something about both the culture and myself. In terms of photography it represented an opportunity to work in a different way than I had at home; to try something new, to court failure without consequence.
Without intending to do so, I fell into a pattern of photographing everyday using a roll film camera and color film. A trip to the supermarket, a ride on a train, a visit to a temple: all became situations for photography. It was a welcome release in which I was aware of being both the observer and the observed. The pictures seemed to record both spontaneous responses and the self-awareness of a foreigner.
Two weeks after arriving in Kyoto, we were awakened in the early morning by a powerful earthquake which destroyed much of Kobe city 50 miles away. Over six thousand people were killed and thirty thousand injured. That single experience set the tenor for our stay in Japan.
Once a week I went to Kobe to photograph the aftermath of the disaster with fellow photographer Toshi Ueshina. Walking through the ruins of the city's nearly deserted neighborhoods was intensely tragic. What remained were the artifacts of lives I could not comprehend through my daily experience, clues to a culture that had revealed the complexity of its many layers. To sift through the details of devastation was to encounter the mirror of a shared pathos, and one of the few times I felt less like an outsider.
In the end, I combined both daily and earthquake pictures into several segmented linear groups resembling Japanese emaki scroll paintings. The merger of movements in time and space, the use of seemingly insignificant details to imply a larger whole, and the implied narrative of interconnection seemed true to the experience I had in Japan. The series is titled “Shigata ga nai,” meaning nothing can be done.
The work was exhibited at the Lisa Sette Gallery in Arizona in 1996, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1998.
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