Japanese Swordsman with a Camera
By Rena Silverman
Postwar Tokyo’s bustling streets might seem very different from a traditional Japanese coastal festival. Not for Issei Suda, whose approach has always been the same.
“My shooting method was once compared to an ancient sword trick in which one slashes his enemy at the same time as he removes the sword from his sheath,” Mr. Suda, 74, said in an interview translated by Miyako Yoshinaga, who has recently curated “Issei Suda: Life In Flower, 1971-1977.” The show, which runs through Oct. 18 in her Chelsea gallery, consists of 37 of Mr. Suda’s precise 6×6 silver gelatin prints.
Looking at these images, nothing exemplifies his sword method more than the light that seems to have been quickly cast upon each of his subjects. In one Tokyo street scene, Shinjuku 1977, a man ascends a staircase in the shadows while his hat and paper bag illuminate the photo. It is impossible not to ask Mr. Suda about his use of his flash, which it turns out, is part of his method.
He laughed. “I use the flash even when I am not sure of its effectiveness,” he said. “I snapshot a passer-by or an object that I find interesting while walking. Sometimes, I photograph a person from behind. Surprised by my flash, the person often turns back, yet looks unsure if I have photographed him or her. When I take snapshots without talking to my subjects, they are of course surprised and often perplexed. They wonder who I am, and why I photographed them. I must say I am quite rude.”
His motivation?
“The complex expression my subjects wear as a result of thinking various things instantly and simultaneously.”
He first became interested in these harsh lighting techniques because of American film stills he noticed growing up in occupied Japan.
“I was attracted to the pan focus, as well as the strong contrast between black and white I found in Orson Welles films, which may have influenced my technique,” Mr. Suda said. “And I loved still photographs of the movies. I felt the power from just one image that was able to represent the entire movie.”
He bought his first camera when he was 20. He liked to wander around the streets and stop in a local photo studio, where he admired the owner’s vast photo book collection. Eventually, Mr. Suda’s mother gave him a Rolleiflex, the square format for which he is so famously known today. He decided he was indeed serious about the craft and enrolled in the Tokyo College of Photography, despite his father’s wish for him — as the only son — to carry on the family’s small business.
“I did not always know I wanted to become a photographer, but taking photographs was the only future I could #imagine,” Mr. Suda said.
Things were a little more challenging when he arrived at the college, because he had only a few sessions with the photo studio in Tokyo. “I remember my teacher once said to me sarcastically, ‘You only have a very good camera.’ ”
Still, he got through college and graduated in 1962.
A few years later, he landed a job photographing for an avant-garde theater troupe, with which he worked and traveled through the 1970s before becoming an independent photographer, and contributing photo essays about folk songs and festivals to magazines....
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