Seen: 昨日 Yesterday
Who: 佐藤 充 Mitsuru Sato / previously on TCS
Where: Red Photo Gallery, Shinjuku
When: January 21 - February 3, 2019 / 12:00 - 7:00pm
Sato represents so much of what I love about a particular slice of the photography scene in Tokyo- he regularly exhibits new work on one theme/series over several years, shoots film, and I’ve never seen him without a camera around his neck. Also we run into each other in Shinjuku quite a lot.
This latest installment of Yesterday continues with an interest in pictures of the expressions and preoccupations of young women in public in Tokyo. They’re mostly candid, but this isn’t the point- and when talking about street photography, I don’t see why it should be. One thing which I think about when viewing Sato’s pictures is how they sit in relation to a lot of contemporary Tokyo street pictures- mostly in how there’s nothing evident in the work that he’s out to make some kind of Gotcha graphically-oriented Decisive Moment Image- the kind that so many now prowl the “void” of Shibuya trying to force out from reality. Sato’s pictures lack that slick aggression that’s “in”… and despite the fact they’re prints on walls they’re more about looking than showing.