I’m not really that big on sharing work-related pictures, however I think that I’ll share some of the photos that I took for one of my last jobs in Japan before coming here to the UK.

One of my Japanese friends is an agent for multiple artists, and she asked me to photograph an event (albeit with very little information from her beforehand). I didn’t really know what to expect, so I just took an SLR with a 40mm lens just to be safe. The event was at Atago Shrine in Tokyo, and was a combination of five different artist performing simultaneously for a live crowd, on the grounds of the shrine.

Two of them formed a shamisen/taiko duo, another was a DJ (they were riffing off of one another during the event, much in a way that made me think of jazz bands riffing). There was a dancer, and I want to say contemporary dance, but when I said that to him, he didn’t really appreciate it, but that was the closest form of dancing that I could think of. His name was Atsushi, and he’s a former guitarist (?) for a rock band. He was amazing. He was possessed (literally, I believe), and then there was a kado (ikebana) artist who was also putting a piece together in the center of everything.

The event was amazing. I hadn’t seen anything like it in my entire time in Japan. Here’s a video of it:

I loved it, and the Crafting Japan team was really nice as well, so I would like to share some of the shots I got, but only the shots that I took during the performance. There was a craft market that brought artisan craftsmen from all over the country together in Tokyo, and a small exhibition that showcased wares from several smaller workshops as well, but you can visit the Crafting Japan website to see those photos if you’d like. I will purely focus on the performance photos here.

The last pictures in this set are a close up of the ‘head’, and ‘body’ of the piece that the kado artist put together. It is a dragon, and I could definitely see it. Also, I’m not sure how or why, but London Craft Week posted one of the photos I took (no, they did not credit me at all), so I put that in there.

I had another job with a Japanese textile company (photos and video), but I don’t think it would be interesting to see (literally just textile stuff). However I did shoot a video for them that I may share sometime in the future.