The way to catastrophe





01
Photography starts from an exposure on a film or photographic paper. In my case I use my pinhole camera exclusively.
I let my negative film dry naturally after photography, so when printing it is not guaranteed the image right after photography.
When you divide the picture into a x, y matrix, and watch its transition, you can’t find the same phenomenon. place by place, piece by piece, they are independent as “one”. The whole “one” shakes and squeaks, and without interruption it changes into “another one”. You can call it an evidence of a journey. In this journey, you may not rest on this way to the “another one”.Hēracleitos called this “Panta-rhei”, I call it “nothing remains” but these mean the same. In other words, a person can’t cross the same river twice.


02
When the image comes back to a material, the piece of negative film is on the depths to collapse.
There is white substance sticking on the emulsion side. The material that sprinkles down used to be called an image.
However, when the image finished its duty, it becomes particles of white powder and it falls off the film.
This is the end of the image. The image lies on the grid of the matrix.
Of course, a grid is a multi layer space and one grid holds many grids. A cosmos image in a high dimensional manifold is in its position but when it meets its catastrophe, the image is just particles that changes into useless sediment.
So, where did the temple image even go?


03
I first heard the word catastrophe in the 1970s. It was when we made a group gallery in San Fedele, Milan, Italy.
The title of the gallery,“ catastrophe art from the east” was named by the artist Yutaka Matsuzawa. I did the secretariat.
When I produced these pictures, I thought catastrophe is the core of expression.
When I met this production where the picture collapses, my brain time warped 30 years ago, bringing a lot of artists to mind. A return of a focus.

04
Lets say you’re in a space where is no up or down, left or right. Lets say we should doubt the thing we thought that was right. Try to like the things you hate. During production, you have to feel pleasant in betraying yourself.
Try to remove your scaffold sometimes. When you overcome in mid air situations, unexpected situations, the spiral will make a turn. “read” when making a decision, push yourself ahead. That means to believe.


05
What is the feeling of fear when print is not “art”? When you look at the print and instantly feel that it is not “art”, somewhere, it feels disgusting. When you analyze this disgusting feel, It refers the consistency to the first thoughts.
Next is about the composition and the form. Of course gradation, contrast, dynamic range and the balance of the image and size are accompanied, and these rise instantly.
The judgment to when making an art is instant, most of the time, so even when looking at art, instant judgment is standard. “look” and “single glance” , instant scanning by the naked eyes is the match. Since the eyes, hands, and the brain are all a parallel connection.


06
As many times said, I take pictures with Polaroid 55T, and let the negative film naturally dry.
So, I never fix the film on dried sodium sulfite. From this, these things as written below occur.
“Aging of negative film”
Scoop up the floating negative film
Always changing never ending journey
The on going journey continues and you’re not guaranteed that you will go back.


(The negative film still changes even thought I’m asleep. The film it self, keeps on moving to the unknown vanishing point. Catastrophe will always come. The film will calmly adopt it)
How does it end? The evidence of the objects disappears, and the remains that were called images are on the film.
The small somewhat image in the dim, looks like the end of the world and gives you the feeling of a sad moment.
I can also hear my words saying “so what?” at the same time, but again, floating in a sea of art informel is getting near.

07
Work in a dark room for me is, after developing light (from the photography), and putting it on a stretching machine and dissection it.
(In a dark room, during midnight, a pupa will become a butterfly)


08
Let the photographic paper washing machine full with water, and twist the air valve, foam starts rising up fast.
This foam washes off the developing fluid that is in the photographic paper. When the photographic paper is washed for
about an hour, it changes into a “paper mirror”, which shines from far behind.
During production, every work is important but washing is very important.
(Photography is how to change paper to mirror)


09
Print is how to control light. In the world of calligraphy, there is a word
『墨を惜しむこと金の如し(spare sumi ink as if gold).
From this word, I say, “spare light as if gold.”
(In a light room, fear one ray of light, spare light)


10
Delaying the conclusion. Escape, delay, these are not bad things. Since the paradigm, stage scene might change because of this. From this, saying “strategy of deviation” might sound better but, sometimes its just laziness, that's why this world is “an inch ahead is darkness”.


11
The sense of reality of where the photography was taken disappears, and “one scene” might occur.
“A different nature” “another nature” might sound better.
Lets say we take a picture of a tree, but from one time, the tree goes over identity, the whole tree, and the picture becomes a tree. Transcending the material, the disappearance of a “place” , and a new “place”.
When does the picture become a “photo”? I always get stuck with this question every time.
The ditch and a gap of time, is all buried in the negative film.
Later, in a dark room the “time “ is dug up from the negative film.
The time of image archaeology is the time that the image is captured in reality, which revived from, “past duration time”.
(Dig the negative film in a darkroom in midnight)


12
Image can’t be identified by words. Picture is a groping device and is not defined in a dictionary.


13
For me, when I want to know how a picture is made of and try a component analysis, I think all syndromes for the human body is also included. Distorted, scattered, rugged, so that's why it is I.


14
In a dark room, silently, light comes in and we start cooking light. Right here. Wave motions, particle transmission, and Alan Turing’s dreams.
The things that happen in darkrooms are promised beforehand that they occur in the world of physics and the parameter that sit there are an invitation to an unknown territory.

15
It is a farewell to the evidence of the objects. This is an important keyword when I make images. Goodbye (noun), goodbye (matrix). Things that can’t be explained, or hard to explain. Lets look at this territory (domain, field, province).
There are worlds where replacing words is impossible
   Meta photography
   Metamorphosis
   A picture of a picture transforming
   A picture that can’t be taken
   A picture you can’t see
   A picture you can’t touch
A time goes over a linear on going time. When did time get recognized by human being?  
The phase inversion of the image, and evolution, collapse, swinging on the flow of nothing.
We can’t unquestioningly accept permanence. And as the same, we uncertainly prank about the changes of the objects.


16
What can we see beyond of what we can see? After going over the presence of existence.
There is always right there. It made me realize something, mapping the image is a different problem though…
Although you can’t see it, you can feel something. Sinking, a sensible lean to “different thing”.
I think some type of extraordinary feeling, which exists in the old layers of the human brain.
Usually, it is covered in education and common knowledge, but when it awakes it becomes a chunk of anarchy, the energy before modern is spinning.


17
Pictures, and the text and drawing to make pictures, are equal value.


18
A forest is as quiet as the deep ocean trench. It can also be as noisy as the beach shores.
A forest is the sea, the woods are the rivers, and you can’t see the forest. You’re walking in a forest you can’t see.
If you look at the forest from above, you can see me standing on the ground.
The sunlight is shaking on the surface of the forest. A “place” that has no heaven or hell is playing in my brain.


19
“Sometimes, art can get something shine even though its from failure” these fresh words were in a book established by a German esthetician.  These words mean drawing breaking. They say, “ A mistake is the deviation that I did not aim at from the thing which I aimed at “. So, it means unintentional artificiality.


20
Meta image. The meaning of the original image rises as the image collapses.


21
Read the negative film, read the atmosphere. Distortion is allowed but perfect averageness is overlooked.
Maybe reading music scores are same too.


22
At a certain day, I put “water lens” in front of my camera and take the forest.
The transparency of glass and water are high, and I didn’t feel the bending when I pour water.
I think I wanted a curved image. I want the image when you dive into a river and look above, just like the days of a kid.
I want the shaking vision like a visual hallucination.
I want the physical lack of clarity from a drop of water, which slides down from the eyes.

23
When does a “picture” become a “photo”?
  ・before taking a picture
  ・when taking it
  ・the moment when you take the picture
  ・when fixing it, in a dark room
  ・when on exhibition
  ・when it reacts on the brain for those who are watching, and when gestation in DNA, for photograph
   metamorphosis theory.


24
Even if a type of obsession is making a nest in your thoughts, try to undo the knot and show your evidence of existence, but, it can’t advance if I don’t begin with the redefinition over and over.
Maybe this is a syndrome. (thinking while watching Christopher Nolan’s “Memento”)

25
When publishing the Japanese version of “National Geographic”, I rearranged the information video to adjust it to Japanese style. In the opening narration, there is a passage “shadow and light, that is photograph”.
Usually I think it's the opposite “light and shadow” but I betrayed and made it “shadow and light” this shadow means all the yin-yang of the object. The things that are visible, the non-visible thing but that is presentiment, I thought these are the “shadows”. Even though there is no image, if you can feel it, which is also a picture.


26
One day, I woke up at midnight; I looked at an old picture that was on a book I was reading. It was brown, with silver floating on it, and looks like solarization with reflection condition of the light. The small particles between the support and emulsion, slowly stacks time, the silver looks like it is living, shining. There is some black clump on Hoitsu Sakai’s art and on Koetsu Honami’s tanzaku paper. The silver on the paper or silk turned black because of the long, long time.
Did Hoitsu and Koetsu predict these?


27
I follow the flow of water with my eyes. “Water” moving as a group. Before, they were drops of water and they stick together and move as one infinite clump. The river is flowing (the river stream that I’m watching, is watching me, and flowing with the river inside me. The river that I see from my eyes flushes me).
I heard that someone got drowned just by watching a river. I got startled when I read Koichi Iijima’s poem. “All I can say is the miserable inside you has no inner river” plus, “there is no inner river at the miserable in you” poets kept on saying like this. (On the edge of Chikuma river, a certain day)

28
The world we are seeing is full of transparent layers. We can see like this, at least that's what I think right now.
The act “sketching” is where you can see these stacks of layers. Lets look at the difference of sketching the view, and taking a picture of the view. The results might look alike between sketching and photography, but the process of making them and the conclusion is different. Sketching is the movement between the eyes and the hand, writing down what you can see. The traces on the paper are footsteps of ones eyes and hands. All of the traces are from one’s awareness.
The results on the paper are what the eyes and hands picked. But a picture shows all the finder regions. Not just that the eyes and lens see different things, the lens is just a device. The lens can’t pick what is the target. When you try to take a picture of something, the area around the object is also included even though you don’t want to.. So the thing inside the picture are not the things you want to take. How unfair. But when the CMOS image sensors communicate with the brain, the story will be different, but we can go over this someday.


29
Hold a handful of clay as tightly as you can. (After a few seconds) open your hand. The clay shows the structure and the space of your hand. It's the contact print of your hand. In the world of photography, contact print is just a technique.
More like an idea. We should never avenge the world we see physically and directly. What I think that helped the sensibility of forming of ancient people is this straight act, and the feeling to an invisible awe target. Now I lay my mind into the minds of ancient people. Grabbing the clay tight again.


30
The wide range of gradation can’t avoid the common sometimes. As an extreme example, you can express it in a small dark place, or the opposite. But, for that to happen, everything besides gradation has to be cleared.

31
There is a man who too a picture of a cloud and called it “me”. Alfred Stieglitz. The title is “equivalent”.
Should I translate it to “me”? So, what is my equivalent? The discovery of equivalence is important.


32
In a book written by Georges Braque, it says, “in art, if there is no true distortion, there is no effect”, if we say “true distortion” in different ways, maybe you’ll have fun on your art history journey. Not just art history, but understanding history is an activity of creation.


33
A dark room is on horizontal movement and vertical thoughts


34
let's check again what to do in dark rooms
  ・the order of color value and foreseeing the collapse
  ・to face with the trace of a “case” on a film
  ・to face the evidence of disappearing form.
  ・read though the boundary of existence and non- existence.
It doesn’t matter what is captured, if an appearance or a “world” is the result, which is what I wanted.


35
I’m thinking of a voice record of a process of changing on a film, live.
A moving chance operation. I want john Cage and Shuzo Takiguchi to do this idea.

Kodo Tanaka