令和四年八月から平成十二年五月の事を思い出す

After I had burned out my video cameras taking the 1990-93 material, I went back to regular film photography for a while and then - after my Nikon FM2 was stolen (and I couldn't afford to buy a proper replacement) I recorded things with words-only for a few years and then - in 2000 - got my first digital camera (with which I took the pictures in this post).

After not having taken any pictures for a few years, it was pure pleasure to be taking pictures again in the spring of 2000, and while film photography taught me to carefully compose pictures and think hard about how I wanted to compose them, I really appreciated being free of film and its need for development!

To this day, I'm glad I learned photography with a fully manual single-lens-reflex film camera, but have very little desire to go back to film now.  True, the feeling of the camera and the experience of carefully taking one picture at a time I would like to revisit, but then to do anything with that, the film would then need to be developed and scanned, etc., so... banzai digital photography!

In one way or another I've been asked several times how/why I choose to record a certain scene.  I've flippantly responded to that before by saying that I just like taking pictures, and enjoy taking pictures of whatever is around me, but - obviously - it's not that simple.

There are a whole range of reasons for taking pictures - from just wanting to experiment with what's at hand to see if an interesting element of it can be captured, to wanting to record the atmosphere of the area, to trying to record some of the essence of an era... etc. etc.

Technology and equipment... I was super-excited in 1990 to suddenly have a machine that recorded 30 frames per second simultaneously with sound!  The early material was quite rough, as I had never used a movie camera before... and by the time I was getting used to taking video, I had burned out four expensive machines and had to stop taking video for a while (post bubble era with my lower paying post-bubble era income).

And in 2000, I was - in a way - even more excited by the digital still camera I began using.  The problem with the video cameras is I was constantly thinking how best to use them, and since they were fairly fragile, I had to constantly take them in for repairs.  And then there was editing, etc.  Contrast all that with my first digital camera, and I was having all the fun of my film photography days with non of the difficulties, new medium learning phase, and frustrations I had experienced with video.

Naturally, the video material is more valuable now, but - at the time (in the year 2000) - I was having more frustration-free fun taking still digital pictures of that spring (all of the pictures on this page were taken on May 11th, 2000).

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon - www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/ - youtube.com/lylehsaxon - lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/ - lookback1997.blogspot.jp/

At what point...? / To what extent...?

Revisiting 1991 again today, I looked at the shotengai street near the north exit of Hibarigaoka Station and realized that the 2022 version has changed quite a lot compared to the 1991 version.  Change to places generally happens incrementally, with each change being of varying degrees.  [Video] 

As a starting point, imagine a single independently owned and operated shop and what changes it might undergo over time:

- Different owners.  The shop may look exactly the same, but with different people running it, that's a notable change for the people who shop there.  For people just passing by, they would probably have no idea that something is different.

- The same owners, but a change in what's for sale.  Again, this is a notable change for people shopping there, but - depending on how visible the change in merchandise is - people walking by might have no idea that anything has changed.  Or, if the type of merchandise looks radically different, someone looking in the window may think how times have changed... but have they?  With the same owners, and if the merchandise has somewhat similar uses as the previously sold merchandise, it could be that there is very little substantive change and it's just a visual shift, etc.

- The building is torn down and rebuilt.  This will likely be a very large visual change (although I've seen some buildings torn down and the newly constructed ones don't actually look at that much different than what they replaced).  Once the shop is open again in the new building, have the owners and/or the merchandise changed?

- Everything is the same - the same owners, the same merchandise, the same building.  But after several decades, young customers are people who hadn't been born yet when the shop opened.  With many changes in customers and in the surrounding area, the shop has become something different by way of contrast - an element with a different meaning than it used to have.

I could go on further with more examples of different types of changes that could affect one shop and how people perceive it, but presumably that's enough to illustrate my point - that there is always change - of one kind or another, perceived or not perceived.  Which is why I usually end up being irritated by people who watch a video showing part of Tokyo and comment that "nothing has changed" (全然変わってない), which is simply not possible for any area of Tokyo over three decades!

As an exaggerated statement, I suppose you can say that, but that comment  全然変わってない is sometimes made on a video that has countless very obvious changes.  Different buildings, different cars, different hair styles, different clothes, etc. etc. and then I invariably think whoever made the comment is disconnected from reality, or unable to perceive their world in any detail... 現実ハズレ？

Anyway, there is always change - of one kind or another!  The better you know a place, the more you will perceive changes to it over time.

Oh... the title "At what point...? / To what extent...?".  I made half of that title before I began writing this - thinking "At what point is it proper to say that a place has completely changed?" and - looking over what I've written above, I suppose "To what extent can a place actually stay the same?" might be better?.....

Change... it's a fascinating thing - and impossible to precisely pin down, but generally interesting to think about.  - Lyle H Saxon

www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/  youtube.com/lylehsaxon  lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/