Seen: Idiot Sequence
Who: Colin Barey
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: March 20 - 25, 2018 (open 12-7pm)
Colin is a good friend and fellow American here in Japan. Neither of us ever go out for the day without a camera or two- his commitment to photography is evident in the amount he shoots and prints in his darkroom at his home. While his previous show considered America, it’s Tokyo and his place in it that’s dealt with in his latest exhibition.
Colin’s work stands out among the swelling ranks of white guys photographically “discovering” Tokyo with their X100s and iPhones. ( How many bios mentioning Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell can Instagram even support anymore?) I know he’s not out to project a view of Japan for an international online audience- and I have a hunch he’s after things that delve deeper, things that establish a mental footing that encourages self-awareness or perspective that helps someone living abroad make sense of their situation. How is it accomplished? Through wry self-portraiture and wickedly satisfying street photography that asks more questions than it answers.
This is harder than I thought to write about- especially when he has done it with such clarity already.
In his own words:
- - -
*Idiot Sequence*
Several years ago, when I was taking pictures of people on the street near where I work, a short, middle aged American guy snarled angrily at me and growled, “Who the fuck do you think YOU are?” Good question. I thought about it a lot that day. Someone friendlier than that guy; probably. Someone who thinks himself better than that guy; definitely. But I wasn’t thinking of myself as what I truly am: an idiot, standing on a public street in the middle of the day, taking pictures of strangers.
I’ve struggled for years with what the point is of being a foreigner in Tokyo photographing the Japanese street. My life here has become something like the everyday existence of those around me but it’s still different. I hate and resent the tourists I see everywhere now for whom Tokyo is a boozy Disneyland, although that’s in my past too. I despise the office workers who crush me on the train every day, probably all the more knowing that I’ve become one of them. I’m sort of somewhere in between. It’s less an existence than it is a state of non-existence.
I guess if I had to answer that guy’s question now, I’d probably tell him that I was just trying to keep my head up and my eyes open, despite living in a place and time designed to put everyone to sleep.
- Colin Barey