I’ve known Claude for years. She has been on and off the road as a messenger for a while now and has also worked with the boys at Le Grand Cycle. Back in May of 2007, after talking for years of doing some kind of portrait shoot, we met up after one of her shifts at the bike shop and cranked out some shots around the neighborhood.  I don’t think any of those ever made it into my portfolio. They were cool shots, but didn’t strike me as

We eventually made our way into a neat abandoned building on Sherbrooke near St-Hubert. On top of being a kick ass cyclist, Claude is also a rock climber. I liked the broken lightbulb hanging from the wire in the background and saw a rock on the ground.  I basically instructed her to pick up the rock like she was gonna smash somebody’s head in. Yeah, I’m that kind of creative director…

Over a year and a half later, I started seeing posters for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino movie. The body language and angles and even lighting are eerily similar. And to top if all off, the movie poster is not even a conceptualized photograph, it is a conceptualized graphic montage based on a screensave from the movie. Check out the original shot of Eastwood here.

I’ve got a sizable dossier of freaky coincidences like this.   It’s basically a huge compliment to realize that (1) great minds think alike and (2)  I produce images with a budget of zero that are on par with mega-budget commercial projects.   I’ll release a few of these online in the upcoming days…

It is always cool to get press like this, but what makes it even more special is that January 2010 will mark my 15th year as a photographer. I have been getting solid press exposure for over 10 years now. What blows my mind even more is to see the progression over time.

Case in point: Ryoichi sends me the new January 2010 issue of Tattoo Burst. Okay… neat profile, but flash back exactly nine years ago, and what do we have? An eerily similar profile shot & layout of me in Burst January 2001 featuring me in my underwear in my old apartment back in the prime of my fetish and body performance period. You can see a printed-by-Jerome-in-the-darkroom 11″x14″ print of my pinkie amputation on the bed of nails next to me. The scan to the right features me at my Tokyo vernissage with the same photo.  Pretty wicked, eh?

The first 48 hours of landing in Tokyo were expectantly insane.  I had not slept in days and had to balance setting up the exhibit while figuring the logistics of CMWC business with no cell phone or regular internet connection.  There is much I wanted to do that I did not have time to do, like shooting and documenting The Ghetto properly – I’m always inclined to shoot portraits of the people I meet more than the places I visit.

The opening night of my exhibit, I finally had a chance to chill out from the intensity of my arrival.  I thought I could shoot the gallery space before the vernissage.  However, it was not long before people were showing up and I was being introduced to all kinds of special guests… I got distracted from my “work” and only took these two shots of the gallery space.  The photos here represent about 1/4 of the exhibit.

I chatted with old and new friends, Japanese, Korean, European, North American, Australian, tattooed, pieced, freaky, sexy, weird, wild, educated, cultured, curious, adventurous, intelligent, disturbing… a flurry of wonderful people and stories.

Throughout all this, I had a drink in one hand and my camera in the other.  I am who I am,   do what I do and I didn’t come to Tokyo to be tame or shy… one thing led to another and I started taking portraits of my guests à la chapter9.

Katayamari, artist and double amputee, with my giant print of Lukas Zpira (circa 2001).

65-year old traditional sword maker, self-pierced.

Mar

Ako

After a few months of organizing and nights of not sleeping, a well deserved feast with my Tokyo crew.

The Ghetto is set up like a cool Alice In Wonderland complex of different department all interconnected… I would say that it was exactly up to par with what I expected out of Japanese counter-culture. At the same time as my solo exhibit, there were two concurrent solo exhibits by my friends Hattori and Keroppy Maeda.

Hattori

Ryoichi Maeda

The three of us after a late, late, late night of drinking…

CMWC registration ID

Jerome in Ikebukuro

A few days into my Tokyo adventure a local messenger hooked me up with his work map as a gift.

Sunday night, Maki smiling in Meiji Park