This black and white photo presenting Fifth Avenue Theatre in Seattle was taken by Hiroshi Sugimoto, a Japanese photographer, in 1997. It is a horizontal composition depicted an old-fashioned American movie palace interior from the end of the last century. Sugimoto used four by five film camera. With his camera shutter open, Sugimoto stood the front perspective to make the photo symmetrical and exposed the film for the duration of the entire movie, so that the screen became the only illuminant provided by the film projector, thus making a large contrast between black and white. With the reflection of dazzling white light, the details in the dark theatre were emerged. The decoration such as the poorly manufactured sculptures of Buddha on both
In the history of civilization, there have been many different types of theatre. There is Greek theatre and Elizabethan theater. Some are musicals, some are comedies and some are tragedies. Some types employ realistic techniques while others are more avant-gardes. But one type stands out among the rest, and that is Kabuki theatre. This classical Japanese style of dance and drama is not just theatre. It is a beautiful form of art, which has been carefully crafted over many centuries.
Tojo Hideki lived from 1884-1948 and he was a Japanese political and military leader. The premier who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he personified Japanese militarism.
This photograph is a 3 X 5 black and white silver gelatin print. This is one of a collection of sixteen taken by the photographer, Gabriel Moulin. This picture is an aerial shot which gives a bird's eye view of the fair. From this overhead, one can easily see the layout of the fair with its various buildings, as well as the location of the island within the blue crystalline waters of the Pacific, ...
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer born in Tokyo in 1948. Upon graduating from Saint Paul’s University in Tokyo with a degree in Sociology and Politics and moved to Los Angeles in 1970 and attended the Art Centre College of Design. He moved to New York in 1974 after receiving his Bachelors degree and now lives in Tokyo and in New York. He divides his work into photographic series, each representing a certain theme. He is most famous for his seascapes, movie theaters, natural history dioramas and portraits, and waxworks series. He explores the idea of photography and time, and uses photography as a way to record science and history alongside the idea of indescribable human nature. His aim when creating portraits is to make them as lifelike as possible so the viewer reconsiders what it is to be alive.
Jerzy Kosinski was born in Poland in 1933 to Russian parents who had fled the revolution. He was separated from his family when the Nazis invaded in 1939. For six years he wandered form village to village scorned by East European gypsies who feared his hawk like face and penetrating eyes. He survived German terror by his wits and he was struck dumb from the shock that he underwent from this six-year period of wandering. He was mute from age nine to fourteen.(New Yorker)
During his short life, Georges-Pierre Seurat was an innovator in an age of innovators in the field of art. This french painter was a leader in a movement called neo-impressionist in the late 19th century. Unlike the broad brushstrokes of the impressionist, Seurat developed a technique called pointillism or divisionism. In this method, he used small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create the subtle changes contained within the painting. Seurat was an art scientist in that he spent much of his life, searching for how different colors and linear effects would change the look or texture of a canvas. He was painstaking in his work, the technique he chose taking much longer to produce a work of art.
Jones, G W. Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found. Denton: University of North Texas asdfffP, 1991. 129.
This is an image that I think of when I consider Japanese culture. They love gardens like this and you see similar images often when considering their culture. It is difficult to tell for sure, but the people in the distance appear to be dressed up. It is as though they have put on their best clothes to step out and enjoy this relaxing setting. I believe that this print is successful at capturing a moment in the mid 1800’s very well. It causes me to sense and experience what the artist was trying to capture. This print seems to conform to the formal theory of art. The print has only images of each object. None of them are particularly detailed or real to life but they do a very good job of organizing and describing the basic elements of the scene. It uses similar colors, shapes, and lines to those one might find in this garden in
3. Mackerras, Colin. The Japanese Theatre in Modern Times. Amherst. University of Massachusetts Press, 1975.
The image of Noriko and Shukishi overlooking Onomichi captures the beauty and simplicity that has come to define Ozu’s style. Aesthetically, the shot is taken from the low perspective of a person sitting on a traditional tatami mat (Random House Dictionary, “Tatami”). The audience becomes the observer to everything that unfolds from a traditional Japanese sitting position. The frame remains still as with every shot in Tokyo Story, but one. The framing is beautiful and symmetric. The composition is maximized for beauty and symmetry. Shukishi is placed in a balance between Noriko and a classical Japanese-deco pillar. Power lines lead the viewers’ eyes around the frame, allowing the audience to take in the full breadth of the imagery. Elegant framing and use of simplistic objects for a beautiful mise-en-scene is unique to Ozu.
Bordwell David and Thompson, Kristen. Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
The director Roman Polanski likes to make a lot of scenes in his movies through doorways and windows, and the reason of that is simply because in that way, he creates a bigger sympathy with the audience, they get to see the films from the main characters o...
McDonald, Keiko I. Cinema East: A Critical Study of Major Japanese Films. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1983.
Before beginning his solo career, Susumu Hirasawa was the frontman for several musical groups, including MANDRAKE, SHUN, P-MODEL, and Global Trotters. P-MODEL is often credited with founding the Japanese Techno-Pop movement in the early 70s, and has since been well known for his extensive use of creative technologies in production; He modified AMEGA software, in order to explore new methods of creating music using the PC, such as modifying a program to take thousands of samples he produced and automatically compose music. He later re-used one of those machine compositions for the theme to the 1997 anime Berserk (Phonon Belt). His use of creative technologies isn't limited to studio production, however. He also makes extensive use of self-built creative technologies on stage.
Cesare Lombroso was an Italian university professor and criminologist, born in Nov. 6, 1835, in Verona, who became worldwide renowned for his studies and theories in the field of characterology, or the relation between mental and physical characteristics. Lombroso tried to relate certain physical characteristics, such as jaw size, to criminal psychopathology, or the innate tendency of individuals toward sociopathy and criminal behavior. As such, Lombroso's approach is a direct descendant of phrenology, created by the German physician Franz Joseph Gall in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and closely related to other fields of characterology, such as craniology and physiognomy. His theory has been scientically discredited, but Lombroso had the merit of bringing up the importance of the scientific studies of the criminal mind, a field which became known as criminal anthropology.