Pure Street Photography — 1981 Kobe by Jun Abe
Devouring Photobooks #27
From time to time I find myself thinking what is “street photography”. While I do not have a clear cut answer, nor do I want to discuss the notion for now. I find Jun Abe’s work is perhaps one of the prime example of “street photography”.
About the photographer
Jun Abe is one of the members of “Vacuum Press”, a collective of photographers and publisher of photobooks. Abe has been contributing to photography zine “Vacuum” sine volume one, and I am looking forward to seeing more of his work in the future.
About the book
I have read my fair share of photobooks, most of them have some sort of text that tells us something about the photographs. They usually tell us about the background, motif of the book, which makes the photographs easier to understand. However when flipping through Abe’s photobooks, readers are left alone with Abe’s monochrome photographs. The title of the book, marked smartly in red, is everything the reader need to know about the book. No long-winded text, no foreword, no preface, just photography.
His books are compact, minimally designed, usually containing around a hundred photographs. It feels a little bit similar to opening a box of prints and going through them one by one.
He is a gentle observer, capturing the small, mandate moments. No dramatic contrast like Moriyama, or scantly clad prostitutes like Yoshiichi Hara. There is also no text to explain his motif. Just photographs of normal, everyday moments from the streets.
What do I think about the book
Although the photographs are in black and white, they somehow feel warm to me. Maybe it is the smooth tones and the apparent grain in the photographs. Or maybe it is the everyday street scenes reminded me of the a warm Sunday afternoon. Through his photographs I can “feel” the ambience, as if I was out taking a stroll with him when he took those photographs. It makes me miss Japan a bit more each time I read one of his books.
Abe took photographs of people on the streets. Children, elderly, and the ever present salary man in Japan. I can imagine the sounds of children playing, the sound of traffic, and people’s chatters… The ambience of the city. When reading the book, seeing all the people being photographed, doing all sort of things, frozen in time. I couldn’t help but wonder about what they are doing, what kind of people they are…etc. It is like people watching on the streets, which is part of the appeal of street photography in my opinion.
Thank you for reading.
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