The photographer doesn’t sentimentalize her subjects; she pays attention to them.
It’s an understatement to say that we live in a world that is at least partially defined by a surfeit of images, and that the photographs we like, or remember, are those we take ourselves. Selfies or photos documenting travel, anniversaries, the great and boring events of life—we cling to these pictures as a way of navigating where we’ve been and who we’d like to be. But these images of our smiling, idealized selves, no matter how true they may be to how we want to feel and be regarded, rarely make room for pain, let alone the more troubling aspects of existence, and we stare at the colorful snapshots taken from our bubble of self-regard, wondering why their fiction of order and happiness sometimes makes us feel so sad.
A number of twentieth-century photographers, ranging from Lisette Model to Alvin Baltrop, made brilliant forays into desentimentalizing the image of the self by recording people as they were—or, more specifically, by recording what goes into being a social creature—on the streets of Nice, say, in the nineteen-thirties, or on New York City’s West Side piers in the nineteen-eighties. Other photographers have produced images that encourage a more private view of their subjects, even as they move through the theatre of being. The Japanese photographer Mao Ishikawa’s black-and-white works—more than thirty of which are currently on view in her show “Rogue,” at Alison Bradley Projects (through June 13th)—are significant for their depiction of intimacy and of the role that politics play in who we are and what we do. Ishikawa doesn’t take photography for granted; nor does she use it solely as a tool to examine her own subjectivity—that is, what she feels about herself, her singularity, in a universe crammed with others. Rather, her pictures are marked by an expansive joy, one in which the medium plays a part, for sure, but the majority of which comes from her subjects and their willingness to display themselves before her camera, an instrument that mystifies even as it elucidates. It’s important to remember that some of Ishikawa’s images were made as long as fifty years ago, and their vibrancy demonstrates how far ahead she was when it came to seeking out subjects she found interesting, not framed by “difference,” but not afraid of it, either.
Born in 1953 in Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture, which was occupied by the United States from the end of the Second World War until 1972, Ishikawa studied photography at the WORKSHOP School of Photography, in Tokyo. Like many young photographers, she was fascinated by her home region, which included the worlds that had sprung up around the U.S. military base Camp Hansen. Her “Red Flower (Akabanaa)” series, from 1975 to 1977, focussed on the Okinawan women who worked in various establishments around the base, sometimes capturing them fraternizing with Black American servicemen, in images that lack any hint of cynicism, of the sense that people are using other people for their own ends. Did these men and women feel different from one another, or was their difference built into their eros? Ishikawa herself worked in one of the bars that served Black soldiers, at a time when most establishments were segregated. (Looking at the pictures, I was reminded of the astonishing moments in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1979 film “The Marriage of Maria Braun,” set after the Second World War, in which the German protagonist learns English from a Black officer who is also her lover. War allows for fraternizing in ways that peace does not.)
Objectification can be fun, too, and you see that pleasure in three outstanding images in particular from the “Red Flower (Akabanaa)” series, which are on display at Alison Bradley. (“Red Flower” is also the title of Ishikawa’s first monograph published in the U.S., in 2017, and it’s fascinating to see there just how deep she went into the lives of these women, some of whom built families with the servicemen.) All are gelatin-silver prints, a format that adds to the shock and the warmth of the flash lighting. In one shot, we see a couple in bed, looking delightedly at the camera, and then, in the next, the same couple facing each other as they kiss. The tenderness of their need is moving. The third image shows some Black men outside what I assume to be a bar. The distance is reportorial—Ishikawa pulls back to show us what this world looks like, at least in part—and what really gets to me are certain details in the picture. It’s a warm night; to the right of the frame, a woman in a long dress stands between two men. The man to her left wears a short-sleeved shirt; her companion on the other side sports a patterned shirt, light-colored pants, and a pair of white shoes. The flash is like another level of heat. But what one fixates on here is how the two men flanking the woman stand protectively close to her. They are not possessive; they simply recognize her smallness, her vulnerability, while Ishikawa recognizes theirs.
There are thirteen images from the “Red Flower” series in the show, and you will long for more, but don’t let that distract you from what’s on display, or from the questions that tie “Red Flower” to the three other series represented in the show, “Life in Philly” (1986), “A Port Town Elegy” (1983-86), and “My Family” (2001-05): What makes a photograph interesting? Its subjects? Its choice of black-and-white or color? Its framing? The moment it catches? Ishikawa doesn’t turn away from the tension of asking what photography is even as she takes a photograph. The men in “A Port Town Elegy” are day laborers and dockworkers she met through a bar she owned in Naha. The energy in these pictures is different from that in “Red Flower”—more confrontational, infused with male bravado and despair. The subjects are defined by poverty and its limiting power: one gets the sense that they drink to forget themselves, while howling to declare themselves—to the cosmos, to one another, to Ishikawa’s camera. A man dancing alone, barefoot, is a wonderful portrait of unself-conscious desolation and freedom, all at once. The photographs in “A Port Town Elegy” are strong images about being trapped and exercising masculinity. But who takes the poor’s power or demand for power seriously? Ishikawa doesn’t sentimentalize these guys; she lets them get in her face (and, by extension, her frame), she pays attention to them, and imagine how rare that is in their world! The distinctly male flavor of these pictures is a very good counterpart to “Red Flower.” The guys at the port may have no economic power, but they belong; the Black servicemen at Camp Hansen don’t. That’s part of the poignancy of both series of images: we all want so much to belong, to count, that there are times when we can’t help but express it.
