Personal and Other Matters
In which I talk about how limitations are good for you, I present Tobey Maguire (the cat), and I talk about a novel by Ōe Kenzaburō
This thing is a little camcorder I used years ago when I made photobook videos a decade ago. I used a plastic tripod that I had bought at a thrift shop for $2 to support it.
You can find the videos on YouTube. It’s funny, the video about The Map has gathered 25k views since it was made ten years ago. Back in the day, I was pleased to maybe see a few hundred views.
Everything happened on the floor. The camcorder would be on the tripod (whose legs hadn’t been extended). The book in question would be in front of the camera. I’d crouch down behind the setup. I don’t remember what I did with my own legs (I’m 6ft3 / 192cm), but I do remember that it was incredibly uncomfortable. Also, the tripod/camera was right in front of me, so I’d have to wrap my arms around it, which resulted in very limited vision. Every once in a while, a cat would walk into the picture.
I remember I was frustrated with the limitations: how nice would it be to have better equipment? This is an ongoing concern. Believe it or not, but I photographed my first photobook, Vaterland, with the oldest model of the Nikon D800, bought used. I’ve always only had the funds to buy camera/computer equipment second-hand or opt for the cheapest possible model (the latter of which inevitably adds more debt).
At the time when I made the videos, I wouldn’t let the limitations get in the way. Each one of the photobook presentations was unscripted, and there was only one take (the rest of the day was spent unfolding my legs). But it was easy: I’d upload the file to YouTube, and that was it. A few years later, I tried to revive the videos, using a better camera. At that stage, YouTube had become more professional (or maybe I had become even more unprofessional), and I couldn’t get the file formats to work easily. So for each video I would spend hours converting to some format I could use. That just wasn’t feasible.
In retrospect, I’ve learned a few lessons from the videos. First, people still watch them. I can’t. I’m dreading to see my cat Harry walk into the frame who’d die from a massive seizure, a completely terrifying event that I still haven’t been able to process. Second, limitations are good. Sure, a better camera would have been nice. But the simplicity worked. Not focusing on the limitations and simply making something was (and still is) the way to go. That’s also what I always tell my students: embrace the limitations, because ultimately they’re your friends. They help you solve problems.
While writing this, I thought the perfect solution to make more videos would be a strap a GoPro camera to my head. Only problem: I don’t have a GoPro camera. And I don’t have the money to buy one (but I have more than enough debt).
I mentioned this Mailing List on Instagram and briefly listed a few of its recent topics. Someone told me there had been no cats. It’s true! I don’t think I’ve written about or posted cat pictures (which I constantly take). So here’s one from the other day (taken with an iPhone 6s because my phone is very old, too). This is Tobey Maguire, and yes, that’s the name he was given at the shelter from which he was adopted (nicknames: Tibby, Potato, sometimes Tony).
Obviously, he’s a very good boy.
Having read a fair number of contemporary novels written by Japanese women writers, I thought I might as well continue diving into earlier material. Ōe Kenzaburō had been on my list, and I picked A Personal Matter (for no particular reason). If you look closely at that cover above, you’ll note a different spelling of his name.
At the beginning of the novel, I found myself wondering whether it had been a good idea. The main character, referred to only by his nickname, Bird, is introduced and quickly comes across as one of those tortured men: born before the Second World War and then experiencing a vastly changed society after having been educated during the possibly worst time of Japanese imperialism.
A number of Japanese photographers would fall into this mould. But unlike them, there appears to be no creative outlet, no passion for Bird. A married man whose wife is just about to deliver a baby, he appears to never have outgrown the teenage period many young men find themselves in, when they’re uncertain about what they want and what spot they desire to be in. He’s also an unrepentant macho — much like many men of that generation.
Bird’s wife then gives birth to a baby that is seriously ill, suffering from a birth defect the description of which betrays the time when the book was written. Even though this is not explicitly stated in the book, it is clear that raising such a child would result in societal disapproval (or worse). It’s not even clear whether Bird wanted to be a father in the first place. So he ends up going on a complete bender (which, we learn, he had done before, right after he got married).
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but there is a very surprising catharsis at the end; and what initially seemed like a despicable character turned out as a terribly conflicted person who under different societal circumstances (a lot less conformity) might be doing a lot better.
After reading so many books written by contemporary women about their role in Japan, I think my read of Bird clearly was shaded by that. At the same time, even though a lesser writer would have turned him into a complete asshole, somehow Ōe managed to bring out the humanity in it all: going through the book, I found it more and more difficult to judge.
I then did a little research online: what had people written about the book? How did other people see it? That’s how I came across an article written by Jennifer Alise Drew, which completely floored me:
“Kenzaburo Oe’s son, Hikari, was born in 1963 with a brain hernia. The doctors told Oe and his wife that, without an operation, their son would die, but that an operation would likely leave him with profound disabilities. This scene plays out in Oe’s 1964 novel, A Personal Matter, in words far harsher than these.”
“Words far harsher than these” truly sums it up. There is more:
“My own choice, which arrived during pregnancy as opposed to after birth, has nothing in common with Oe’s, beyond the basic question of whether one is willing to raise a child with disabilities. […] Our son emerged weighing three pounds, fifteen ounces. […] We would not discover anything “wrong” with him until later, when he began to miss his developmental milestones; we were given the diagnosis of cerebral palsy shortly before he turned two.”
Drew outlines the book a lot better than I was able to, voicing some of the concerns I had picked up on but couldn’t quite pinpoint. But of course, there also is her own perspective as a mother with a child that all-too-often is described in too simplistic or too hurtful terms. There is an in-depth reflection around the terms “ability” and “disability.” You want to read it. It’s incredible.
As always thank you for reading! Stay safe and well!
— Jörg
I’m a freelance writer, photographer, and educator currently living and working in the US.
This Mailing List is my attempt to bring back some of the aspects that made early blogging so great -- community engagement and a more relaxed and maybe less polished approach to writing and thinking about photography. You can find the bulk of my main writing on CPhMag.com.
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