festival wrap-up

The Cherry Blossom Festival ended last weekend with a rainy parade and the blossoms turning into leaves. Although the festival is over, the tourists are here to stay. Next major National Mall event: Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Alberta, Native Basketry, and Nuestra Musica: Latino Chicago are the 2006 themes) and of course the Fourth of July.

Other than practicing my photography, I got a chance to check out two events in particular: War Photographer, a documentary film that showed as part of the DC Environmental Film Festival, and the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler Gallery.

War Photographer is a film about James Nachtwey, who some consider one of the best. The film's theme is defined by its opening quote from Robert Capa, "If your photos are not good enough, then you are not close enough." There's no doubt that Nachtwey's work is good for that precise reason and it's absolutely remarkable to see how close to tragedy and danger he gets to in the film. The film as a whole was great, but three points really stood out to me: (1) Nachtwey's calm and quiet persona allows him to have access to and take pictures where no one else can, (2) a microcam mounted on Nachtwey's camera allows the audience to see Nachtwey as he is looking through the viewfinder and the scene as he sees it from his viewfinder, and (3) he brings attention to places where people are suffering, not only from war, but from poverty, hunger, disease, and environmental disaster. To no big surprise, many of the injustices and suffering were a direct or indirect result of government either failing to serve its people or being outright corrupt. I highly recommend this film (it's out on DVD) and checking out some of James Nachtwey's work on his website.

The Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler Gallery was downright amazing. I wish I could have taken pictures (photography was not allowed) to share my favorite woodblock prints and paintings, but even then, pictures would not have done his work justice. I saw the famous "Great Wave" painting and found some new favorites of my own. What surprised me the most is being able to clearly pick out elements of Hokusai's technique (original at the time) that artists still use today, particularly in Western comics and Eastern manga. Although my art vocabulary isn't very strong, I found that Hokusai's work balanced between abstract and real. In Thunder God (below), the depiction of the demon had form, while the representation of the storms was an abstract series of dots. I usually don't get abstract art, but before reading the exhibit text, I already had a feeling of "storm" when I looked at the dots individually, and then as a collection. Another element that's always interesting to me is how East and West exchanged ideas and influenced each other at the time. Hokusai lived from 1760 to 1849 (Japanese Edo period, French Impressionist period, and of course American colonialism through the American Civil War) and his work was widely known by artists in the West, including: Monet, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. It was also interesting to see how Hokusai exchanged ideas with the Chinese (through his training) as his work included elements of classical Chinese landscape paintings. A collection like this does not come along every day, so if you live in DC or plan on traveling here before 14 May, go see it!