Book Review As I Was Searching (For Another) By Selina Kudo Reviewed by Brian Arnold "I want to start by saying that I’ve been unable to learn much about artist Selina Kudo, short of an installation she composed for the Tanks Art Centre in Australia in 2022 (a conceptual piece about backyard trampolines)..."

As I Was Searching (For Another). By Selina Kudo.

As I Was Searching (For Another)
By Selina Kudo

Bad News Books, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, NZ, 2023. English, 60 pp., 7x9½".

I want to start by saying that I’ve been unable to learn much about artist Selina Kudo, short of an installation she composed for the Tanks Art Centre in Australia in 2022 (a conceptual piece about backyard trampolines). When I googled As I Was Searching (For Another), the artist’s 2023 work with New Zealand based publisher Bad News Books, I didn’t find too much more information, but there is a brief quote from the artist about the book on the publisher’s website:

“Through each frame, I embarked on a journey to find something elusive, the nature of which I could not articulate at the time. This book encapsulates moments of subtle introspection and fleeting connections that were made while living in Japan. The images echo a quest for both self-discovery and a sense of belonging within the intricate tapestry of Japan’s everyday life.”

There is no text in the book to explain the pictures except that they were made between 1991-2000, so this quote is all I really have to work with.

I’ll be honest and say that I find the artist’s statement on the Bad News Books site to be a bit bland, kind of I like saying I photograph the everyday things most people don’t see, or I photograph human impact on nature. That said, however, I find As I Was Searching (For Another) to be a delightful little book. It’s only 60 pages, made with risograph prints, and in edition of 99 copies. The pictures present a clear, concise, and simple narrative. The book begins with a photograph made through an airplane window showing two flight attendants and ends with a picture of two stacked suitcases (a lovely framing to the story); in between, we see conventional pictures of Japan (some in unconventional ways) – Mount Fuji, carp swimming in a pond, kimonos, rice paper dressing screens, and iconic city streets are all depicted here. The charm of the book comes from a feeling I can only call naivety, a sort of innocence abroad story, fully articulated by the clear but crude risographs used to illustrate her story (again confirming my conviction that how pictures are made is essential for understanding them).

Through the course of the book, we do learn a little bit about the maker. Kudo’s pictures do embody a feeling of self-discovery, as articulated in the statement marketing the book, but this appears as a process tempered by equal parts alienation and warm acceptance. Kudo seems to be fully enthralled in a phenomenon that I like to call the glamour of strangeness, that intoxicating thrill of discovery found while traveling the world. We also learn some more intimate and personal things about the artist, specifically an early stage of pregnancy (the ultrasound is reproduced in the book) from which I can only deduce two things (I recognize that I might be totally wrong). First, the artist learned about her pregnancy in Japan. But I also like to think of this picture functioning metaphorically, suggesting the seeds planted by a seemingly banal experience in Japan run much deeper than the deceptively simple pictures suggest, rooted deep inside her and reshaping her sense of self.

I don’t want to say too much more about As I Was Searching (For Another) but will encourage you to try and get a copy if you can. Despite such minimal production, the book is a lovely object. The paper cover and taped binding might seem crude, almost like a notebook, but lend the book an intimacy that seem essential for understanding Kudo’s intentions. The embossed gold foil lettering gives it a little bling, and the small edition a temptation for a rare look into a private world of an Australian experiencing Japan.

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Brian Arnold is a photographer, writer, and translator based in Ithaca, NY. He has taught and exhibited his work around the world and published books, including A History of Photography in Indonesia, with Oxford University Press, Cornell University, Amsterdam University, and Afterhours Books. Brian is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and in 2014 received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/American Institute for Indonesian Studies.

Book Review Mirror City Photographs by Harry Culy Reviewed by Blake Andrews “For photographers shooting hometowns, acquaintance is a constant hazard. It can be hard to get a clear-eyed view of a place from within. Sometimes you’re better off putting some distance between yourself and the target..."

Mirror City. By Harry Culy.

Mirror City
Photographs by Harry Culy
Bad News Books, 2023. 100 pp., 58 duotone plates, 8x10".

For photographers shooting hometowns, acquaintance is a constant hazard. It can be hard to get a clear-eyed view of a place from within. Sometimes you’re better off putting some distance between yourself and the target. Even if the material is the same, the exterior view is different. Familiar subjects assume a fresh veneer: clean, objective, and unfiltered. At least in theory.

Harry Culy’s debut photobook puts this hypothesis to the test. Mirror City collects Culy’s b/w photographs shot upon his return to Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), after ten years away. Growing up in the New Zealand capital decades earlier, he had come to know the place quite well. He’d explored the underbelly and skateboarded its sidewalks. He’d formed a sense of what it was to be a resident. He’d even made photographs of the city.

But those were inside views from a previous time. The key that unlocked Mirror City was foreign travel. Upon returning to his old hometown, he saw everything with fresh eyes. “On my return, I encountered an eerie feeling — 'home' felt strangely unfamiliar,” he described the lightbulb moment in a recent interview. “When I came back I realized that New Zealand is actually a pretty strange and amazing place.”

From 2019 through 2022, he photographed in and around the city, working intuitively. “Pretty much all my work comes from places and people I have personal connection to,” he says. “Moving through the city I made pictures of anything that caught my attention.” He photographed local friends, structures, and lyric documentary scenes using a 4 x 5 view camera, later making silver gelatin prints in a darkroom. As if that didn’t keep him busy enough, he also co-founded a publishing company. These disparate life strands come together in Mirror City, a “kind of gothic love letter to my hometown” which is published by Culy’s own Bad News Books.

This isn’t just any type of gothic letter. It’s Antipodean gothic, a version particular to New Zealand and Australia. The south island nations foster a sense of isolation and removal all their own, reflected in films, photo, and visual culture. Day is night. The southern heavens are literally star crossed. Heck, even their seasons are backward. “It’s a feeling of being unsettled,” says Culy, “of uneasiness, anxiety, which is kind of simultaneously pleasurable and not at the same time.” Throw in a global pandemic, and Mirror City takes on a broody edginess. Photographs of spider webs and wrought iron fencing hint at unconscious restrictions while Satanic symbols, spray painted phrases, and graffitied carvings might be Antipodean iconography. Abandoned ephemera and underground symbols seem commonplace in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a city which feels closer to smallish exurb than metropolis, at least as photographed by Culy.

These visual dust ups are just the leading edge of wider disruptions. Culy is continually drawn to broken forms. He photographs discarded lumber in a heap, smashed windows, barbed wire, twisted antennae, and melting candles, all possessing a certain photographic charms. As the title hints, there are even a few mirrors in the mix. As formal compositions all are well seen. They’re aesthetically pleasing enough. But taken collectively they convey a downcast mood. Perhaps this is the aforementioned Antipodean gothic, or the years-long residue of Culy’s jet lag? Hard to say. In any case, Mirror City’s ugly backdrops form a sharp contrast with its human subjects. All are young and sensual, captured in situ on city streets. Some radiate a pure beauty which is near otherworldly. They might easily be cast in a film or lifestyle magazine. One wonders if Culy sees himself reflected in them, or perhaps his artistic soul is in junkyard glass.

Culy offers clues in the form of text excerpts. These are written in silver on black pages, then interspersed here and there with his monochromes. He shares shopping lists, notes to self, iPhone ramblings, movie titles, board games, and other scattered snippets. If they don’t make much literal sense, that’s not really the point. They operate on the subconscious as dream-like suggestions. These phrases get into the reader’s mind and float in the cranial soup alongside Culy’s pictures. It’s a pleasing enough effect, similar in some ways to the disrupted logic of foreign travel or urbex photography. Ideally these materials might combine into a mirror held up to the self, or to one’s home city.

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Blake Andrews is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.