NOT NIIGATA featured on Flak Photo

Screen shot from flakphoto.com

Andy Adams at Flak Photo has started a 4-week feature of NOT NIIGATA. I finally Skped with Andy last night for 1.5 hours after being in email contact with him for a few years, it was nice to put a voice to a face to a blog.

If you don't know Flak, (which, after him telling me how many hits he gets each month, I would find hard to believe) please take this chance to add it to your daily ritual.

He will be featuring a new image from the NOT NIIGATA book each Saturday in November. It will also be augmented with interviews and other links which we find.

Most importantly, I would like to thank everyone who has purchased a Special Edition of the book, you really made it possible by committing before the book was even produced. There are still a few left out of the edition of 100. It is a "print of choice" so you can select from any one of the 36 images in the book. A 30x40 cm color print plus book for 130,- Euro. You can read more info here.

If you want to read a bit about my travels and work in Japan from earlier this year, please visit the tag JAPAN.

NOT NIIGATA, not an illusion (anymore)

Andrew Phelps, NOT NIIGATA, 2009

I'm happy to finally announce the completion of NOT NIIGATA.

The printing was, as always, a roller-coaster of stress, bliss, compromise, but all-in-all a treat due to Juergen and Petra from KEHRER who did so much of the pre-press; scans, graphic, design.

My wife only growls in my direction when I tell her it feels like giving birth, so I will avoid metaphor and just say it is a relief to have it here on the desk.

I have 2 hand-bound copies, the regular edition will be released in due time, with an official launch at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Thanks to everyone who has ordered a Special Edition, you have made the fancy details possible.

There are some Special Editions left, a book and a print for 128,- Euro

The standard trade edition is a (relatively) limited edition of 888 copies.

Casebound linen, inset cover photo, 28x28 cm, 80 pages, english and japanese.

Photographers, like birds, greedily peck away at the world, digesting the occasional pebble as well as the intended breadcrumb. While nibbling away in Niigata Japan, Andrew Phelps has gracefully assembled a poetic journey which, factual to Niigata or not, has me lingering by his side, hoping for a delay of my return flight to the real world.

Jeffrey Ladd

here an interview on AHORN magazine

Andrew Phelps - Not Niigata special edition

Photographers, like birds, greedily peck away at the world, digesting the occasional pebble as well as the intended breadcrumb. While nibbling away in Niigata Japan, Andrew Phelps has gracefully assembled a poetic journey which, factual to Niigata or not, has me lingering by his side, hoping for a delay of my return flight to the real world.

Jeffrey Ladd

My forthcoming book NOT NIIGATA, will be released in the late summer with the Kehrer Publishiers in Heidelberg, who also published HIGLEY a few years ago. You can read a bit about my travels here.

To help finance the book, we are offering, for a short time only, a "print of choice" special edition, limited to 100.

NOT NIIGATA, 2009

28x28 cm, hardbound

ca 112 pages

ca 40 color images

Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg

Special Edition, 100+5 e.a.

30 x 40 cm, C-print + book

128,- Euro + shipping

By purchasing a Special Edition, you will receive a copy of the book before it is officially released. You can then choose from any image in the book. Each image is signed as a Special Edition image and is outside of the normal editions for this work.

To reserve a copy, please send an email with your complete mailing address to one of the following:

aphelps@gmx.net

contact@kehrerverlag.com

To see a preview of a few images, go to:

www.andrew-phelps.com/niigata

Thanks

The roller-coaster - some closure on Japan

This should be the last random, non-classical BUFFET post about my Japan trip as I have just arrived back home and am on that anxious roller-coaster ride of editing all of the pictures. Last week I had it down to 107, now I have it down to 42, I have to get it down to 30.

I am glad to be back home and I eager to start looking at books again but I have to admit the best part of my "job" is being out photographing. I have always known that, but am reminded each time I get the chance to do it for an extended period of time; no phone, no car, no calendar. I also know that the reason I can do this occasionally is because of a handful of people, family and friends, who make it possible, not to mention the amazing people along the way who open their lives up to a stranger, it blows me away every time; you stumble with a map, make a wrong turn and bump into someone who gives you a half hour of their time or points you in a new direction.

Here is just a small glimpse at a few of the pictures I like right now; will probably change my mind tomorrow, or within the next hour....

all photos: Andrew Phelps

The Village People meet Julie Andrews

Yesterday will definately go down as one of the strangest/most memorable/ironic and funny of my trip to Niigata.

I was met at the Toyomi station by Kentaro Sato, a local sculptor in this very very small village in the mountains. He has set up an artist retreat and workshop in the summer and occasionally rents out rooms to the rare winter guest. This is my second visit to his place in the last 3 weeks as he seems to be the "guy to know" in these parts.  Each person we met in Toyomi, Mr. Sato would introduce as ".....so an so is one of the Village People". It was fantastic. I always wondered what had happened to them, now I know...

Kentaro and Mikiko Sato.

My main objective, which he mastered for me by pulling alot of strings I suppose, was to make an  attempt at the impossible, namely bringing the big camera into an Onsen, one of the beautifull hot-spring baths found all over Japan. This is normally very tabu, but like I said, Kentaro seemed to have the right stuff. So, I spent about an hour, naked of course, making some pictures in the Onsen. All men as it is not co-ed, so it only took awhile for everyone to be comfortable.

So I thought my day complete and I was happy, and then I found out that Mr. Sato's wife, Mikiko, has offered to perform a "tea ceremony" for me, something which is usually only done in private family circles; a real treat to get to be a part of this. It is a cermony which involves numerous gestures of washing bowls, spooning out tea, pouring water, turning the bowl in certain directions, passing it back and forth, bowing, washing it again and on and on. I messed up enough the first time that I got to do it again, which I didn't mind.

and just when I thought it coldn't get any better, I find out we are having the ever coveted "Head of Yellowtail" for dinner. I was only thrown for a minute, until I tasted the best fish of my life. I have now heard how rare it is. I can only recommend it if you find it on your local menu. No you don't eat the eye. ( I watched in anticipation, happy to see nobody go for it)

You would think that would pretty much take the cake, but you would be wrong.

After dinner we retired to the living room, very comfortable, in the traditional Japanese style which I am very fond of and was looking forward to absorbing hours of local Japanese lore, hearing their stories of life in a small mountain village in the middle of Japan, maybe peruse their personal photo album and talk about the cultural differences which our two completely different lifestyles contain but instead the tv gets turned on and what should be on the entertainment list for tonight.....?

None other than "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews, dancing and singing her way through the hills of Salzburg. Go figure.

Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do

No Cinderella story

I am in the final week of my 3 1/2 week Niigata trip and although I still have some pretty important and interesting things lined up this week to photograph, I can't say that I don't feel like I am sliding down the backside of this trip, looking forward to returning home, seeing my family and friends and finally seeing some photographs. 3 weeks seems to be about the longest I can go on working non-stop without finally seeing some images. I feel like I am loosing track of what I have done and not done and so many of the places, people and ideas are all melting together. 

When I flew over, I ended up having to leave a bunch of gear with my buddy Ben at the airport as I was surprized to hear I could only take 20 kilos with me, so I havn't been buying books which means I haven't the interesting discoveries to bring to the BUFFET. I am planning on one more sweep through a few corners of Tokyo on my last day, so maybe I will find some things. I suppose I could put on ALL of my clothes for the flight to lighten my suitcase.

Speaking of clothes, I don't get it, but today 9 people pegged me as a photographer.

Now I'm not usually one to stand out in a crowd when working, so I was then shocked that 8 of those 9 new I wasn't from "around here" and even 7 of those guessed I was American. How did they know? Are the Japanese so sensitive at reading people or did something about my looks give me away?

I am guessing it is my size 11 feet. As much as I love the custom of taking shoes off indoors (even practice it in Austria) I just havn't been able to find a pair of slippers which fit.

Here a few more random bits of randomness, thanks for putting up with the "late night, feel like I should do something on the blog while I have internet" phase.

I promise more substance again someday.

Andrew Felpus - Back on land/line

After one week on the island of Sado, I am back in Niigata city with a stable internet connection, some frozen toes and a wedding to go to in 3 hours.

I was met at the ferry by what I am sure will somehow find its way into a new nick-name by my friends back home.

I was fortunate to have a great guide named Kaori who led me around the island, translating, suggesting, driving and holding up strobe lights. I was actually able to do this:

despite this:

I did buy one of these:

so I could make a few of these to show all of my friends and family back home, who are often disappointed that the photographs I make of a place don't fulfill thier wishes to see what a place looks like; so these are a few for my uncle Harold, who told me, after returning from Hawaii years ago that he had no idea how Hawaii was because he hadn't gotten his slides developed yet.

I am finding, when in a foreign place, I am attracted to both the mundane and the exotic; often these are one in the same...

Yoshihara Yukihiro - Spiral Life

From the family archive of Yoshihara Studios, Shibata, Japan. From "Spiral Life".

Yoshihara Yukihiro 

Spiral Life - An archive spanning 130 years.

I have met an interesting artist and all around great guy in Shibata City. YOSHIHARA YUKIHIRO, is a media artist who has now taken on the massive task of bringing order to the archive of images which his family has accmlulated over the years. This doesn't sound like anything exrtrordinary to the average person like you or me who have a shoebox or two filled with snapshots or maybe a few hundred slides. But Yuki is the 6th generation photographer in a family-run photo sutdio that has been in operation since 1870. Thats right, heaps of wet plates, albumin prints and an archive that documents the rural life in a medium sized Japanese town spanning almost 140 years. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am not working digital while I am here, so I can't show you the portrait I made of him, but this is one he made of me.

I felt dumb asking if I could borrow a tripod as I left mine in the hotel. I then prceeded to work in a studio which is older than the part of my family tree which I can trace back with any accuracy. The original darkroom (it is the small brown door behind my head) is even in tact which was used for coating wet-plates 130 years ago. This place is just vibrating with the  ghosts of the literally thousands of people who have had a portrait made here, their pictures now, thanks to Yuki, brought into order so as not to be lost.

It is the smallest twists of fate that lead you into the places and to the people that help you keep moving along with your work. It is so much more vital when traveling in a very foreign place.

Thank you for the hospitality Yuki.

Andrew Phelps - Print for a Book Swap #3

Things have been quiet here as i am in Japan until the beginning of March. Thats me, with a bad fashion choice of a green sports coat, making a portrait of some perfectly dressed gentlemen at a rice festival in the countryside of Niigata Perfecture. 

So as to not fall completely out of the loop, I am launching number 3 of the Print for a Book Swap.

And once again...

I have made some cut-backs this year as well, specifically buying fewer books. This is my shot at trying to keep my book collection up-to-date.

I am offering a few of my press prints from various book projects over the last years in trade for a selection of books I would like to have. THESE PRINTS ARE SLIGHTLY DAMAGED (a small kink here or there) and most have various printer notes cryptically scribbled on the back, but they are in tact though they show the signs of the scanning and proofing process. They will be inscribed with my name and project title but will also say "press print- not for sale". They are 24x30 cm c-prints, hand printed by me and should look exactly like the printed versions as the scans were made from these exact prints.

I am offering this print from HIGLEY:

Andrew Phelps, from HIGLEY, 2007

in trade for this book:

Michael Subotzky, Beaufort West

Send me an email  if would like to trade. I am not going to tell you where to buy it, maybe you have an extra copy laying around, but if you do simply order one, I would suggest doing so through one of the stores which I listed in the roster to the right.

The last 2 trades have gone in about 20 minutes, sorry if I can't contact everyone personally, I will give it to the first offer!

This print is no longer available.