The Flower of Stillness

A fragmentary translation of Zeami [世阿弥 元清]’s The Nine Stages of the Noh in Order served as both inspiration and creative headfuck for me during my time in Tokyo. As an outsider to the performance tradition in which it’s founded, The Nine Stages is opaque, yet provocative: the image of the Flower of Stillness — snow piling in a silver bowl — abides with me, and in my work. The Nine Stages of the Noh in Order Higher stages Flower of the miraculous – transcends power of speech and working of mind due to the yugen of a master actor. …

Crowds…

How few crowd shots I have. Those there are, are mostly compositions of faces, foreshortened by a long lens, flattened into a single plane. And not an absence of crowds, only, in my pictures — absence of the space for crowds, absence of space itself. What the world is: bodies & light.

Glances

Don’t look at it — just glance! Sometimes in a mere glance one can see more than in the close scrutiny of a thousand details. Bridget Riley