Haiku Moments, Busy Streets: A Photographer’s Artist Statement Mine is not the stereotyped life of a practitioner of traditional Japanese poetry and aesthetics. Though my ancestors worked on farms in the hills of the Philippines, I grew up in highly urbanized sections of Manila and Los Angeles, received my education in Washington, DC, and now fly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles. Mine has been a world of busy streets, pollution, filth, beauty and anything but peace and quiet.
And yet, during this time, I fell in love with the practice of kado — the Japanese way of poetry. Japanese poetry has often focused on aware and yugen — meaning “transience” and “standing in awe,” respectively. Usually, these poems center around nature and natural settings. The most famous haiku, after all, written by Matsuo Basho, concerns a frog jumping into a pond. My life, however, has rarely seen nature beyond glass aquariums and a distant view of the San Gabriel mountains. For me, kado is just that — a way. It’s a way of life and a constant sense about oneself, rather than a restriction to a certain setting.
My urban photography, then, has emerged from two highly-realist traditions: the practice of kado, and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photography. I took up photography because a lens can capture what a haiku cannot - an almost-exact replica of what I am seeing when I experience a “haiku moment.” I carry a camera with me everywhere, especially my lightweight Panasonic Lumix, which I take out of my purse at a moment’s notice and capture what I see with its crisp Leica lens.
For me, the way of photography never ceases. I photograph on my commute, during lunch breaks, on my way to an opening, anywhere that an image strikes me. In general, I shoot from a distance, to help the viewer step away from his or her manner of experiencing the city, which is often up close and overwhelming. I fully believe aesthetic unity can be found at any time and place if my eyes are open to it.
In my work, I specifically seek to marry the haiku concepts of aware and yugen with Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, to at once capture the inherent transience of city life and the moments of awe in which urban dwellers sometimes find themselves. Through this marriage of aesthetics, I seek to recognize life in the worlds’ megacities as a life that, though far from idyllic hills and forests, is filled with countless haiku moments worthy of appreciation.
discussing haiku
in grand central station -
i wonder
how many poetic moments
have rushed this table by
an xiao