Embrace the “Boarder-less” in B/W Street Photography
Interview with Japanese street photographer
—Osamu Jinguji
Osamu Jinguji (神宮司 修)is a man born to be an artist. Originally, he was an actor and model. Unfortunately, due to health problems, he had to stop the career of performance. It had never been easy to start a different life but Jinguji had conquered those obstacles and chose photography as the core of his new artistic life. He feels that being a photographer is the best life style for him to survive in this world.
His work shared on Rinse is called “A modest resistance in flux of space-time” which is only a peek of his great amount of beautiful and impressive street photo series. Jinguji doesn’t simply just takes photos. It is more like an expression of his passions, memories and ideology. His current photo art style can be strictly defined as “BORDERLESS” (No Border), a word which encapsulates the following 7 concepts:
1. A renaissance of the soul
2. Symbiosis with all this world’s phenomena
3. The eternal conflict with time and space in the universe
4. Beat myself, beat my core and beat my existence
5. Resistance against all invisible pressures
6. Warning against the hegemony of civilization, science and fashion
7. One love in Chaos
#To read the full story : “A modest resistance in flux of space-time”
#To know about Osamu Jinguji Photography
How did you find your interest in B/W photography? What is the best part of it?
All colors belong to black and B&W is near to fiction, but it’s very easy for me to feed the most important essences back accurately to people.
According to your “Border-less” with 7 concepts , there is one described as “Beat myself, beat my core and beat my existence.” Could you tell us more about it?
The origin of this short sentence ‘Beat myself, beat my core and beat my existence’ is the following one of my basic slogans (catch-phrases) .
“To beat my SELF, beat my CORE and beat my EXISTENCE. That’s my PASSION, my CHALLENGING and my LIFE.
And…!”
“That’s my ART & SOUL in this world.”
—by Osamu Jinguji, Jun-11–2012
by Osamu Jinguji
I believe that the essence of the arts including every picture is also a succession of “Creation and Destruction” in this world. At the same time, I make sure that their conducts and processes for creating every art are the works finding light, beauty or brilliant matters like “Hope”, “Dreams”, and “Faith”. Through the darkness, in the chaos, or in oneself like regret, failure or collapse and so on. “BEAT” in above slogan means to fight with my darkness on my short history in this world, win against them (or destroy each of them or leave from so called stereo-typed ideas or break out of my shell) and create the future as my “Only-One (unique/original)” art. So, based on that meaning, I don’t know yet which ‘PUSH’ or ‘BEAT’ is correct.
You have quite a lot of works about street photography. What is the process to make a series based on this genre?
I have taken photos of models, musicians or performers live several times, not at studios, but now I prefer the street. I don’t know what will happen, who I will meet, someday or somewhere. So, when I go out for the photo shoot, I try so as not dare have any ideas or purpose. I do things that way, because I get great joy from new discoveries.
And, I love a free spirit. The basics are very important for everyone. At that point, I often followed guidelines but now, finally, I’m following my sixth sense at an unconscious level, especially whenever I must decide the most important things in my life, whenever I select my subjects for taking pictures and whenever I expose their raw data and finish up my work.
How do you motivate yourself to take photos?
Basically, I have neither purpose nor goal in my life. I love a ‘simple’ life.
I take a photo, change it to suit my original art and inspire inspire a lot of people with them. It’s an endless cycle I hope. However, my goal, if I were to use one phrase, is that I live out my life as a unique artist with great satisfaction.
Who inspired you in photography? (or who are your favorite photographers?)
My favorite 7 photographers are as follows; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Steve McCurry, Jeanloup Sieff, Nick Knight, Mario Testino, and Ikko Narahara.
I love and respect a lot of photographers worldwide, who you may also know and like, as most of the above 7 photographers are quite famous, but the best artist I respect now is Picasso, because I can learn many important things as an artist from him. Especially, it’s about the most important thing— endless ‘Creations and Destructions’.
Which photo is your favorite/ impressed you the most in “A modest resistance in flux of space-time” series?
by Osamu Jinguji
To say honestly, I don’t remember when, where and why I have ever taken this picture. I didn’t know about this existence for about six months, at least until developing it. So, I am sure that I took it on an unconscious level or his/her pure soul and innocent mind led me to take it at that moment. However, I feel, with this one shot, I have got something about the most important sense or challenge (I can never accurately say it but without a doubt!) as one of street photographers, as one of artists and one of human-kinds on the earth. Thus it can also represent the concept of “With each photo comes a rebirth of my soul as another piece of myself.”
Now, I can believe her two eyes are my soul and mind, themselves, that I need for my remaining life in this world, and a piece of time I have been ever looking for in my past years.
by Osamu Jinguji
Words for people viewing“A modest resistance in flux of space-time” series.
This series, which is selected for Rinse, is only a part of my complete work, but at the same time they’re my representative ones which are all selected by VOGUE Italia, Art+Commerce (the biggest agent in New York), and “PhotoVogue Collection” (Worldwide) , in my short photo-art-work life for the past 5 years starting from 2009-May.
#To read the full story : “A modest resistance in flux of space-time”
# If you have any interested in his works by this series, you can find more on Osamu Jinguji Photography, “The Next Generation B&W” including a slide show by 672/3,443 images (19.5% of all my stuffs dated Sep-14–2014) and selected from my parallel worlds series VII~XVIII by 12 kinds of the times and spaces, which is also one of my current life works as the series of “Funeral Procession of Time”(時の葬列) (2012-Jan~’NOW IN PROGRESS’).
# Osamu Jinguji participating overseas exhibitions/art-fairs schedule are as follows;
1. “Paper Art Collection ‘14 (1 year!!)” at Gallery ART concept DEN in Berlin, Germany, Info From May-1st, 2014
2. “Cavalieri Hotel Gallery Exhibition (1 year) ” in Malta, the Mediterranean, Info From July-25, 2014
3. SPECTRUM Miami Art Show 2014 (Miami, USA) Info Dec 3 to 7, 2014
Meanwhile, Rinse have invited lots of talented photographers around the world to share their best works. If we haven’t reached out to you, and you also have a great story to tell, please don’t hesitate to come share it with us on Rinse.
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