Kyoto Archives - Marco Garcia Photography

Geisha

Blurred images of kimonoed women, alabaster faces, geta shoes clacking down cobblestoned streets. Red stained lips. Paper umbrella. Eyes downcast. A hint of an ancient past. A unknown future.

Geishas…also called Geikos in Kyoto are one of Japan’s most iconic symbols. Once though of as prostitutes in Western minds, a geisha is a highly trained entertainer who sells her craft, often at high prices, to entertainment establishments via her geisha house, or okiya. During their performances, geishas, or maikos (who are often younger women who are still training) sing, dance, and play traditional Japanese songs using traditional string instruments. Geishas and maikos also sit with clients helping pour drinks and coyly flirt with customers.

I had a unique opportunity to spend time with a maiko in Kyoto and photograph preparing herself with makeup and getting dressed. I was helped by the Chika Yoshida at the Kyoto Tourism Federation. The Federation and Yoshida-san helped me accomplish most of what I set out to do in Kyoto and I owe them a great deal of appreciation for all of her hard work.

Picture courtesy from Chika Yoshida.

I will post more images from my shoot in the future. The first image is actually from a past shoot but I am still editing my current work.

Hot, sweaty and dirty

Japan is really hot in the summer. Unbearable. Even the locals said the summer heat was the worst in years. Little did I know I would encounter weather so bad.

It was really hot. Anyway…I traveled to Japan this past August for a guidebook and photographed just about every tourist site in 13 cities across southern Japan including Tokyo. I flew into Tokyo and traveled to Shimonoseki, Hiroshima, Kurashiki, Kobe, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, and Nagoya. Spend a few days in Tokyo and decided (and was pushed by an aggressive editor) to go back to Kyushu and covered Fukuoka, Kagoshima, and Kuamamoto. I spent loads of time staring out the window of the Shinkansen bullet train watching the world blur by.

I’ve been to Japan many times in the past for both pleasure and family as well as work. I shot my way across the Noto Peninsula for a bicycling magazine and I’ve done many a project on my own throughout Tokyo and surrounding areas. Japan isn’t new to me but its always an adventure. Karaoke (yes, I sang), hot baths (no…too darn hot), rotating sushi bars (pretty cool), sake (need you ask), yukatas (if I can find one that fits) and Godzilla (grrrrr!) But this trip wasn’t just about badly howling Frank Sinatra songs and tossing empty beer cans into the street because heaven forbid the Japanese make throwing trash away easy…it was about taking pictures…and let me tell you I took some pictures. I think I captured on an average about 2000 images a day and that equals about 50,000 images…and thats on the conservative side.

Seems all I did was have my face buried behind my camera snapping away. And when I wasn’t taking a picture, I spent most of my Tokyo time (and for that matter in every city I traveled to) drinking Pocari Sweat, the Japanese version of Gatorade (and neither taste better than the other) while standing and sweating over a vending machine. The heat and humidity just about killed me. On one of my last days in Kyushu, I just about fell to heat exhaustion. I don’t think I’ve ever been that hot. Not even after a tough workout class with my iron-butt trainer have I had salt stains ring my shirts and socks that seemed as if they came out of a washing machine.

So I was a hot, sweaty travel photographer. Glamorous? Well, I got to travel to these exotic and foreign destinations visiting tourists spots and restaurants but its hard to enjoy. You are there to capture, as best as you can, the essence and feeling of that location, the taste of this food, or the peace in that temple. All of this has to be done on a frame or two and done within an extreme short period of time. In most cities, I had only a day or two to cover what most tourists would cover in a week. I mean from train station to museum to park to castle to museum to restaurant to store to museum to temple to shrine to restaurant to scenic area to historic spot to statue to ferry to train to bus to hotel and so forth all the while you’re deciphering a map written in Japanese hoping for a moment of brilliance that never comes. From sunrise to sundown for close to a month. You get very little sleep, rest, or time to enjoy anything. And talk about the walking. I walked so much I wore the rubber off my new Lacoste sneakers within the first two weeks. And did I mention the heat?

There is also the amount of equipment I have to carry. Multiple cameras, lenses, laptop, cords, cases, hard drives, more cords, flash cards, cases, bags, zip locks, and even more cords. Also clothes. Its not fun. The fact that you are always fearing a hard drive (although I had four of them) would go down loosing thousands of images is enough to make you stay up at night. It was no different in the old days with film but digital seems to be tougher as there is just so many more accessories to carry around. You could still in one way or another loose your film. In my college days, I back packed through Central America and Southeast Asia. I carried a film camera, a few lenses, and a few rolls of film. Once my kit (camera, film, passport, etc..) got left behind at a bus station in Saigon because a porter forgot to load it onto our bus. It arrived the next day, no problems asked. I sweated that one. Now…its a different story. Way too much on the line. Yet, today I feel like I am just a walking byte.

You also have to do all the logistics and planning, deal with the language barriers, read maps and outdated guidebooks, try to communicate with unfriendly locals who don’t want their picture taken. Cloudy weather when you need sun, dirty clothes that need a wash, and raincoats that never fold small enough to carry comfortably. Train schedules, flights, tickets, overhead baggage. Odd sized money, coins, vending machines, strange foods… travel photography isn’t what you think it is. Its not walking up an noon with a foreign beer hangover and going to make epic photos of a group of monks at an ancient temple. Its waking up at 5am with a foreign beer hangover hoping some monk won’t scream bloody hell at you because you forgot to take off your shoes when you entered…or how you walked in circles trying to find some obscure cafe some writer wrote about but never went to…or trying to explain to someone who doesn’t speak English who doesn’t understand my bad Japanese or pantomime hoping they’d explain where the hell I am on a map that isn’t written in English.

Travel is tough.

Not about photography…

Every so often, I have to blog about something non photo related.

Today’s subject…futbol and the world cup!

Nationalism is good.

And its even better when you follow the World Cup! Only a global event event like this can bring dark feelings of patriotic song, memories of past wars, and historic games in which your country revenged a past debt from decades ago. As for the US, our collective soccer history really starts in the 1990’s when the US held the ’94 World Cup but it still gives many Americans the chance to paint the flag on the face, drink loads of beer early in the afternoon, and hoot the ol’ war chant U-S-A! U-S-A! We really can’t lay claim to a North vs South game where slavery is on the line or even a USA vs whom every we’ve gone to war with in the past. Imagine the game strategy against Vietnam…carpet bomb the backfield, bomb the neighbors, try to win the hearts-and-minds of the opposing fans, and then have the US soccer federation tell the team to lose the game because the rating are low on ESPN. We have played games like US vs Iran (or as I recall the Great Satan vs the Ayatollah’s rock and rollahs) but they just don’t have that historical feeling like watching England vs Argentina where memories of the Faulkland Islands ring clear. Yet US soccer is still fun to watch regardless of their historic shortcomings and past. No I take that back, that Iran game at the ’98 WC was pretty heavy. I recall all the Iranians having heavy mustaches.

For the past few weeks, I’ve drank loads of coffee as the games start as early as 4 AM in HNL, and I have wrapped myself in the feel good Americanism of Team USA. Forget about our failing financial woes, our pointless war in Afghanistan, our leaderless nation not doing enough to clean up the Gulf oil spill…ITS WORLD CUP TIME! Its time to wave the flag! Sing at the top of our lungs: WE ARE PROUD TO BE AMERICANS! (where at least we know we’re free at this point from VAT taxes, a forced national health care, etc…) We are free right NOW and we should paint our faces in red-white-and blue and sing the joys of the athletic nationalism.

I can’t say most Americans are always proud to be American. Hell, Michelle Obama stated not too long ago…” For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m proud of my country.” I guess she’s not watching enough soccer. But we should all feel proud when our national athletes take the field and do battle for our collective pride. Billy Clinton was down at one of the USA games and when interviewed after the game, he was hoarse and teary eyed. Bill did America proud!

Sadly, the US is out. The mediocre Americans lost to a slightly stronger Ghana whose many players all work in the top leagues in Europe. Only a few Americans play near the pinnacle of top flight European football but most still play for second and third tier teams or work in the MLS in the States. By far the best and brightest (?) athletes converge at the big three sports in the US leaving soccer for moms, SUV’s and suburban white kids. We can’t say the US is out for a lack of trying. I mean some of the best games were played by the US. Just listen to Spanish announcer Andres Cantor call the game for the US against Algeria in the first round. Landon Donovan scored an overtime winner that still puts chills down my spine where I see that last second golazo. You can listen to it here in espanol from youtube.com.

But the US team just isn’t good enough to compete beyond the first round and knock out stages. Criticism has come from all sides stating we have a average domestic coach, players are not good enough, etc. I’m also reading the US soccer federation will now create better outreach programs to pull kids from the greater American gene pool. What does that mean? It means soccer will try to move into the ghetto and el barrio and pull kids who would normally go to football, basketball and baseball. Good. Imagine if soccer were to steal an Eli Manning, a Kobe Bryant, or an Oscar Dela Hoya? We’d, like most other sports, dominate. My friend David has always said why not get a 6’6 center from a basketball team and train him just to stand in front of the opponent’s net and jump up and hit the ball with his head? That’s more or less what Peter Crouch does for England?

And besides with all the immigration that floods legally and illegally into our country, we’re bound to have some Diego Milito from Argentina or a some other Latin, Eastern Europe or African star show up.

Alas, most of my teams are out. From America, to the country of my heritage (Mexico) the the country of my language (England) and now the country of my wife (Japan.) I’ve got nothing. I could start to dwell in the roots of my background (Portugal and Spain) but now Portugal is out leaving Spain with the only thread to really cling. I could never really pull myself to cheer for a national team that wasn’t mine or I didn’t have some connection to but at this point, the world cup is over. I’ll still wake up and watch the Germany Argentina game or the Brazil Netherlands game but in reality, its no fun. The nationalism is gone. No more chanting yes we can as we did and we found out we really couldn’t.

Besides, I miffed at the poor handling of major mistakes by FIFA for not allowing goal line technology to be employed. England had a goal taken away and Argentina was clearly off sides against Mexico causing the Mexicans to return to a game where an obvious injustice had been done. The US had a game winning goal taken away by a ref from Mali. Did anyone ask if the ref might have anti US bias? The US doesn’t have the best image in the third world. And besides, might that ref have Al Qaida sympathies?

Either way, another World Cup is just about done and I’m feeling depressed and blue. So much emotion goes into each game and it hurts to see “my” team loose. Eh–enough of this because soon enough, English Premier League will start in August and the drama will begin all over at the club level. All the big stars will go back to their multi-ethnic teams and makes loads of money again. Christano Ronaldo, who did absolutely terrible in this Cup, will go back to his millions in Spain and loads of screaming fans.

One sad note, the English, who were absolutely terrible in this world cup, were missing Beckham. What fun he would have brought to the atmosphere of a dying English side.

60 gigs and counting

I’m on the sixth day of the Japanese adventure and have over 60 gigs of images. I think it equals about 4800+ images I shot. I have two more days of shooting. I might run out of room on my hard drive and external as well. Thank goodness I can go buy one in Tokyo!

I also managed to fire off several quality rolls of film on the Leica. Excited to see that stuff.