Photos: Kosuke Okahara’s “Blue Affair,” an experiential documentation of Koza
“Blue Affair” is a photo book, and also an experimental short film based on photographer Kosuke Okahara’s dreams of his time spent in a town called Koza in Japan. Creative director Tatsuya Ishikawa writes extensively about Okahara’s work and process in the afterword of the book. He writes how physical and nonphysical boundaries shape the identity of Koza’s people and demarcate Koza as an entity set apart from the rest of Okinawa island.
Tatsuya Ishikawa, a creative director writes about the work in the afterword, “In the pictures captured in Koza by Kosuke Okahara, I don’t see the photographer. It’s not because he was the one photographing, or for some other physical reasons. I don’t find superficial emotions emanating through his lens from either the subjects or from the photographer.”(Photo by Kosuke Okahara)
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“Nobody’s gaze ever met his lens, as if the photographer was not present. This might not make sense, but it feels to me as though while the photographer was with his subjects, looking directly at them, he was actually observing from another realm.”(Photo by Kosuke Okahara)
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“What is left are pictures free from superficial emotions such as warmth and sadness and left with an almost unbearable weight of presence. Without a doubt, in those moments, while sharing the same space he was observing from some other dimension.”(Photo by Kosuke Okahara)
“As Katakana is a symbolic way to define and separate things with non-Japanese origins, by giving Koza a Katakana name, an “otherness” is implied. As such, this also suggests the existence of borders. For Koza, its borders exist in multiple planes and dimensions,” writes Ishikawa about Koza, where “Blue Affair” is set.(Photo by Kosuke Okahara)
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“Okahara realized the inherent contradiction in the documentary process. Being more conscious takes one away from the purpose while getting rid of the purpose is the only way to get closer to the real intent. In that sense, documentary is like a tragedy of fate.”(Photo by Kosuke Okahara)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
