Exhibited: 同猫棲時代 / Co-Nekotation Era
Who: Sean Marc Lee, Masayuki Nakaya, Myself
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: August 30 - September 11, 2016
Last year I met Masayuki Nakaya at his reception at Zen Foto- I was smitten with his first photobook, Nekopathy, and bought two copies. Around the same time I saw my pal Sean’s photoset Cats and Girls on C-Heads. Women and cats- - Cohabitation- - Photography- - film cameras- - I had been taking similar photos since getting a cat in 2014. It was time to collaborate.
The title is a play off of Cohabitation Era, a 1970′s Drama featuring Meiko Kaji. I tossed the kanji for cat (猫) in it- it’s not easily readable in Japanese but the plasticity of the language allows for playful creation- it makes sense if you look at it. (Likewise, neko, the Japanese word for cat, found its way into the English title). Since all three of us are quite laid back we had no plan until the day we arrived at the gallery to hang the show. The layout was fairly organic, with each guy taking a section of the room. I tried to remain faithful to the camera used for my pics- the date-stamped Big Mini compact camera shots were lined up according to date, printed large on glossy paper with white borders- larger versions of the prints I get back from a 1-hour photo. Leica shots were black and white done in my darkroom, and reflecting the inherent cheapness/valuelessness of digital photography, my iPhone shots were printed from the color copier at my local 7-11.
But more than the how, the what is more interesting- apartments and loved ones (both human and feline, clothed or undressed) and intimacy were what it was about. As it should be, love is the subject. The show was vivid, sexy, funny, weird, personal, and well received. Really, who needs “photographic objectivity” when you have a cat and a partner and a camera?