Seen: 手負いの熊 / Wounded Bears
Who: 甲斐啓二郎 / Kai Keijiro (website)
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: May 19 - May 31 / 12:00-19:00 / Closed Mondays
Kai, a freelance sports photographer, exhibited the first of his Wounded Bears series in May of 2014- This current show is a fine continuation (perhaps improved?) of his subject matter- men participating in the Dosojin fire festival held each January in Nozawa Onsen in Nagano since the Edo period. A simple google image search for “Dosojin Fire Festival” will bring up the kinds of pictures one would probably expect- images focused on the Fire itself and spectacle. The participants that appear are reduced to a swarm* included to demonstrate the scale of the thing smack-dab in the center of the frame.
What sets Kai’s pictures apart is how instead of working with The Thing Itself, he photographs the phenomena erupting around him. His lack of fear of getting in the mix, or perhaps ability to do so with ease grants him proximity. Weaving and ducking and pointing his Mamiya 7 at the rough-and-tough ash-covered flashed faces of very real people engaged in an aggressive and masculine struggle– he’s capturing effort of individuals locked in battle with something that’s not easily or even possible to be photographed.
It’s not far removed from the real theme of his excellent series of Old English village football melees, Shrove Tuesday. (buy the book!)- indeed, it could be the same essence that he’s after. One might not think that ruddy-face out-of-breath and balding British blokes wrestling over a ball in a snow-covered field outside a village in England would have much in common with these singed Japanese men in workwear cavorting atop a flaming pile of wood in January would have much in common but Kejiro Kai’s visual documentation tie these worlds together. Man, someone get this guy and his Mamiya and Portra over to Pakistan already…