附文 – 孤寂 | Solitude

 

Tomo Kosuga

毒Sir 译

 

深濑昌久的鸦是摄影史上一本标志性作品，也是摄影书的一个高点。如潮的赞誉，流逝的时光，却抚平了作品中不少阐释 艺术家执着于主题（孤寂）的迷人细节。这些作品，并非单纯地呈现他所承受的，苟活于世（存在的）的焦虑和苦闷，还映射出以鸦表现的艺术上的自我认知，更指向癫狂边缘上孤独的存在以及艺术性的实践。直到1992年，因为从他最钟意的酒吧楼上跌落，生命的最后20年里他失去了知觉，并不得不隔离看护。深濑昌久终于变成了那只被他自己的镜头定格，永远停留在他最不缺拥趸的画册封面的鸦。

 

深濑昌久于1934年出生在日本北部北海道的美深町。他家经营深濑写真馆（Fukase Shashinkan），这家写真馆是他的爷爷在1908年创办的，他是家中的长子。6岁他就开始帮助冲印，升入初中之后他便行摄于镇上的节日庆典。家人希望他能子承父业，但他升入大学（东京日本大学摄影系）后却着迷于东京，决定定居东京成为职业摄影师。1968年，在日本设计中心及后来的Kawade Shobo出版社当了一段时间商业摄影师后，他决定先出版自己的作品集，并成功登上了摄影杂志和展览。当时的作品主题还是他的爱人和家庭，宠物猫，以及停不下来的自拍。总之，这时的作品都是私人影像。

 

日本摄影师往往把摄影书作为呈现作品的主要载体，深濑昌久也是一样，陆续出版的摄影书都以他私人化的视角呈现世界。观看他所有作品最直观的感觉，即是摄影师本人。想要了解鸦，我们就必须回顾那些在1986年版鸦诞生之前出版的摄影书。

 

深濑昌久的第一本书《游戏》（Homo Lundence）。[1] 这本书汇集了他10年间的影像，分为6个章节：宝宝平静的降生，留下襁褓中宝宝离去的母亲，探访屠宰场，与新伴侣的婚姻和生活，与老婆吵架后破门而出撞见嗑药的嬉皮士，以及和老婆的重归于好。对这些事，这些人文档化的记录手法，以及这本书本身的形式都反映了70年代的日本风貌——高速经济增长下的迷醉年代。

 

Yokko（洋子）是在1978年出版的第二部影集。虽然是以洋子为主题，但两年前他们即已离婚。在他独自前往新宿避世，潜心完成这个系列的三年里，深濑昌久仍一直感激婚后生活。不过不少照片都是在他“即使已经不怎么有趣但不可以放弃拍洋子”的执念下完成的。[2] 最终这种单相思也并没能挽回什么。洋子曾经将这段时期的感悟写下来，标题是“病入膏肓的利己主义者”。

 

“我们共同生活了十年，但他从来只通过镜头欣赏我。我相信，所有我的影像都是属于他自己的照片。”[3] 

 

深濑昌久承认这篇“病入膏肓的利己主义者”，他说他处于“只有我们在一起所以才能拍她的矛盾之中”。[4] 他为了摄影最终还是牺牲了私生活。

 

“我想，我生在摄影中，我的生活也被摄影包围。我无能为力，但又强迫深爱的人进入我的影像。我取悦不了别人，也取悦不了自己。我很迷惘，也让别人迷惘。拍照就真的这么有趣吗？”[5]

 

这就是一个希望从别人眼里看清自己的人的独白。这是一个摄影师独自承受的令人痛心的悼词。对于无从逃避的命运，他已绝望；而这绝望的命运，却淬炼出我们所知，并为之喝彩的孤寂的摄影师。“拍照就真的这么有趣吗？”他质问着，但在作品里，哪里又有追求欢愉的踪迹？在这一点上，深濑昌久已经深深陷入摄影，无法自答。

 

在他和洋子婚姻的最后阶段，深濑昌久开始筹备新的作品集，他最著名的代表《鸦》作由Sokyu-sha (苍穹舍)，成立于1986年的出版商)在1986年推出。这个系列始于1976年他返回故乡美深町的途中，彼时他才42岁，但生活已经因为酗酒，十三年婚姻的突然崩塌而一团糟。无法摆脱困扰的深濑昌久，终于决定逃离东京。当不久后归来时，他决定展出旅程中拍摄的作品。他将作品交给Shoji Yamgishi, Camera Mainichi（每日摄影）摄影杂志的编辑。本来这辑作品准备称作Tonpoku-ki，即“逃往北方的理由”，但Yamgishi却建议以“鸦”为名，理由是鸟的作品数量较多。深濑昌久后来回忆，“一开始也无法确定，好像感觉是野生动物摄影集，但想到tabi-garasu（即迁徙的鸦，意指居无定所四处流亡的人们）还是决定这个名字。”《鸦》出版之后，很明显深濑昌久最感兴趣的题材无疑是他自己的作品，是通过生活中其他人，其他地方，其他活动对自己的审视。[6]

 

深濑昌久花了很长一段时间构筑这辑作品，并且在杂志、小型展上展示。1976-1982年Camera Mainichi（每日摄影）杂志承办的8项装置系列最有助于理解这辑作品，这其中还展出了深濑昌久真情的文字，揭示他与鸦连结的方式。这个系列还从1976年他在美深町当地的作品开始，梳理清各组成部分的时间顺序。在1978年的一项装置中，他还去了金泽——洋子的故乡。关于他第一次在夜空里拍摄的鸦，他写道：

 

“鸦素来群居。日落时便飞回巢里，日出时再三两成对出来找食。所以能拍到鸦的时间，只有傍晚和清晨，相机的测光表在这时完全无法工作。我有个想法，如果拍黑夜里的（黑）鸦（日本有个童话故事叫黑夜里的黑水牛），用闪光灯应该可以。最开始我也没有信心，但在金泽的兼六园（日本三大名园之一）试拍之后发现，效果很奇特。我喜欢这种对比：在飞的泛着暗光，树上的眼睛透亮。”[7]

 

第9页所拍的鸦正是他所提到的作品之一，摄于1978年金泽。这幅作品同样收入之前《洋子》这本专辑，是全书的最后一张。他把鸦当作洋子，并反复凝视。（This was not the only glimpse of ravens in Yohko.）在有些作品中，洋子披着遮住脸的长发，好像一只大鸟。那本书后半部里还有一张图片，也是1978年拍于金泽，是神似鸟的洋子站在能剧（日本传统剧）舞台上。相机离她很近之外，并且将她的面部表情变得朦胧模糊。她举起的双臂，包括整个体态都像行将飞升的鸟。深濑昌久啊，我们也许可以推测，也许真是的从她故乡的鸦里看到了洋子。

 

在《每日摄影》杂志上看出的文字，也为《鸦》的语境品提供了重要的线索。例如，1976年他与洋子分手后，在美深町的旅行行将结束之际，深濑昌久拍摄了相当重要的一幅作品。这幅作品摄于襟裳岬（襟裳岬是一处集中表现出北海道地形特征的景点），他回忆道：

 

在休息区的垃圾堆中觅食的鸦毫不怕人，即便我已凑得很近，大概2米的距离。它也不害怕镜头。它奇迹般地看向镜头，又好像在发牢骚。我似乎成了挂着相机的鸦，随着在浓雾里上下穿行的黑伙伴玩耍。[8]

 

他所提到的这只鸦似乎孤独沉静。其他的作品，大多数拍摄的是飞腾的鸦，或者成群聚集。这只鸦，就是最著名并且广为人知的，1976年摄于襟裳岬的这一只吗？

 

于是鸦对于深濑昌久愈发重要，已经不单单是一个主题了。他将自己幻想成与“黑伙伴”翱翔天际的鸦，所以在鸦中辨认自己。因为刚刚结束十三年的婚姻，他在这群黑鸟中找到了孤寂的自己，找到了自己的孤寂。

 

这辑作品在1986年集结成册，他的职业生涯又继续了6个年头。《鸦》之后他的际遇如何？摄影有没有为他的孤独和孤寂找到解决之道？

 

完成《鸦》之后，深濑昌久从1990开始拍摄自己完成了一系列自拍像，包括Bukubuku, Private Scnes(1990-1991)。他摄影中的自我意识太过于凸显，似乎“成了病”。[9] 当1992年终于找不到自拍的趣味之后，他又回到鸦这一主题。而4个月之后，就是命里躲不过的那次跌倒。

 

“我已厌倦这个系列，所以我现在拍摄鸦。我每天下午4.30-5.30之间在办公室的阳台上用1000毫米的长焦镜头拍摄，这时它们正好归巢。同时，我也画线画，并思考怎样把两者结合起来。也许我会先先制作黑白拼贴，接着再加上彩色手绘。”[10]

 

这些手绘最近才完成修复，包括大概1000张纸牌大小的手绘印象。大部分是腾空的鸦。因为他用的是1000毫米的镜头，所以每张影像里都是单只的鸦。似乎深濑昌久用这么长的镜头，就是为了去掉其它多余的鸦，即便它们结群而起。在他的档案里发现的笔记中，有关于这些作品的描述：

 

“过去的半年里我一直用尼康F3配卷片马达（motor drive）拍摄明治神社中归巢的鸦。只是为了打发时光。”

 

想到半年里的每一天，他都靠在阳台上举着长焦镜头，多少令人心寒。普通人上班前，都会在镜子里看看自己。深濑昌久通过长焦镜头，也是一样。已无法从鸦身上看到自己的深濑昌久，转生为鸦。

 

在最后几年里，深濑昌久不仅在鸦的影像上手绘，也有了些画作。有些关于鸦，还有些仅仅是涂黑整张纸的螺旋线条，但都很简单（没有什么复杂的构图）。如果只有几张，那它们可能只是随手涂画，但实际上深濑昌久留下了几百张。况且，根据最近开封的负片来看，他尝试将这些涂画和自拍并置，所以这些理应属于他作品的一部分。

 

这些叠加在自拍像上的线画里涌动的羁荡，表明深濑昌久这一生里的苦心经营已经彻底坍塌。这样病态，自己无法言说，他人无从体会的孤苦的结局，令人侧目。螺旋线永远不会有尽头，在这无尽的纹路我们似乎可以感受到鸦的目光。这只鸦似乎有无穷多的眼睛盯着我们。线画的黑色愈深，螺旋也就愈强，那黑鸟嘶哑的哀鸣也就越发尖利。

如果孤寂有源头，那就是从《鸦》开始。

 

 

 

 

Masahisa Fukase's Ravens is one of the defining bodies of work in the history of photography and a high point in the photo book genre. This accumulation of accolades, and the passing of time, have obscured much of the fascinating detail which explains the artist's pre-occupation with this motif throughout his work. It was not simply a reflection of the existential angst and anhedonia he suffered throughout his life but manifested in artistic self-identification with the raven and ultimately spiralled into a solitary existence and artistic practice on the edge of madness. And all this before an untimely accident in 1992, a fall down the stairs of his favourite bar, resulted in him spending the final twenty years before his death with his consciousness suspended and in medical isolation. Fukase became the singular raven frozen by his camera and immortalized on the cover of his most famous book.

 

Masahisa Fukase was born in 1934 in the northern Japanese town of Bifuka in Hokkaido. He was the eldest child of a family who ran a photo studio called Fukase Shashinkan, established by his grandfather in 1908. At the age of six he was helping with washing prints, and after moving up to middle school his tasks came to include travelling to town festivals and ceremonies to take photographs. He was expected to take over the family business but he became fascinated with Tokyo when he moved to the city to study photography, and decided to settle there and to become a photographer. In 1968, after a period working as a commercial photographer for the Nippon Design Center and later for Kawade Shobo Publishers, Fukase made the production of his own work his priority, successfully presenting it in photography magazines and exhibitions. His subjects included his wife and family, his pet cats, and ultimately the inescapable subject that is the self. In other words, his prolific output focused on the private.

 

It has often been noted that Japanese photographers regard photo books as the primary vehicle to present their work, and Fukase was no exception. All of the photo books he produced consistently dealt with his private and personal engagement with the world. What emerges when viewing the totality of Fukase's work is nothing more or less than the photographer himself. To understand Ravens, therefore, one must take a retrospective glance into the photo books that he published before the first release of Ravens in 1986.

 

The first photo book Fukase published was Homo Ludence (1971).[1] The book brings together the photographs he made over a ten year period divided into six chapters: the still birth of his child, the disappearance of the mother of his stillborn child, a visit to a slaughter house, his marriage to his new companion and his life with her, the hippies and drugs he encountered in Shinjuku when he stormed out of the house after the repeated conflicts with his wife, and finally the reclaimed life with his wife. The style of documentation of such events and people and the form of this book reflect Japan in the decade to the early 1970s, a heady era of rapid economic growth.

 

Homo Ludence was followed by Yohko in 1978. Whilst his wife was the motif of this series the two had actually divorced two years prior to the publication of the book. Married life was indeed reprised after Fukase's three-year absence during which he ran off to Shinjuku solely for the sake of completing the series, but the photographs were taken under Fukase's painfully one-sided determination to "keep on photographing Yohko for a year even if it may not turn out to be interesting".[2] Ultimately this single-minded approach ensured that the separation was permanent. Yohko has written a sharp analysis of this period in a text entitled "The Incurable Egoist"

 

We have lived together for ten years, but he has only seen me through the lens, and I believe that all the photographs of me were unquestionably photographs of himself, [3]

 

Fukase himself acknowledged this tag of "incurable egoist" when he said that he was in "a paradoxical situation where [we] were together just so [I] could take photographs of her" [4] Fukase essentially sacrificed his private life for his photography.

 

When I think about it, I was born into photography and my life has always revolved around photography. There's nothing I can do now, but I always forced the people I loved to become involved for the sake of my taking photographs, and I couldrit make anyone happy, including myself. I was always lost, and caused other people to become lost. Is it fun to take photographs?[5]

 

This is the confession of a man who sought to see himself reflected in the eyes of everyone else. It is an achingly sad declaration of the burden of being a photographer. He despaired over his ineluctable fate but it was precisely this fate that created the solitary photographer we know and celebrate. "Is it fun to take photographs?" he asks, but it is difficult to see any trace of fun in his images. At this point Fukase had already sunk so deep into photography that he could not answer the question for himself.

 

In the last period of his marriage with Yohko, Fukase began work on his next photo book, his magnum opus which was published as Karasu Ravens] in 1986 by Sokyu-sha. The start of the series was a journey to his home island Hokkaido in 1976. He was forty-two years old at the time. His life was in tatters due to issues with alcohol and the imminent collapse of his decade-long marriage. Unable to handle the situation, Fukase left Tokyo in the hope of escaping his problems. When he returned to Tokyo not long after, he decided to exhibit the photographs he had taken during this trip. He showed the photographs to Shoji Yamagishi, who was working as an editor for the photography magazine Camera Mainichi. Fukase had originally planned to call the series Tompoku-ki, or "the accounts of an escape to the north," but Yamagishi suggested "ravens", due to the preponderance of photographs of the birds. Fukase recalled that he "wasn't sure at first because it made me think of wildlife photographs but I decided to go with it because of the expression tabi-garasu [literally meaning 'travelling raven' referring to people moving from one place to another with no stable place to live]". By the time of Ravens it becomes absolutely clear that what Fukase was primarily interested in was photographs of himself, looking at himself through the prism of the people, places and events in his life." [6]

 

Fukase had actually been building this body of work over a long period of time, presenting photographs from the series in the form of both contributions to magazines and in small exhibitions. Particularly valuable for understanding this entire body of work is the eight-installment serial that ran in Camera Mainichi from 1976 to 1982, which includes Fukase's texts rigorously detailing his emotions and the way he related to the ravens. It also clarifies the chronological sequence of the elements of the series, commencing with the photographs of his native Hokkaido in 1976. In a later installment in 1978, he travelled to Kanazawa, Yohko's home town. Referring to the time when he photographed a murder of ravens flying through the night sky for the first time when he was in Kanazawa, Fukase wrote:

 

Ravens live in groups. They return to their roost at sunset, and fly out in twos and threes at sunrise seeking food. So the time that a flock can be photographed is restricted to sunset and sunrise, when it is still so dim that the camera's meter does not even sense the light. I then had the idea that perhaps the ravens in the pitch-black night (a play of words on the title of a Japanese fairy tale entitled Black Buffalo in the Pitch-black Night] could be captured using flash light. I was not confident at all but I gave it a try at the Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa. The results were splendid. I liked the effect: the birds caught in fight glistened with a dark sheen, and the eyeballs of those on the trees sparkled."[7]

 

One of the photographs made on this occasion is the photograph on page 9 of Ravens, titled Kanazawa, 1978. It was used in Fukase's previous book, Yobko, as the final image to that volume. This was not the only glimpse of ravens in Yahko. In some photographs Yohko appears with long hair hiding her face and she resembles a large bird. Even more pertinent is an image where she stands on a Noh stage, found in the latter pages of the book. Despite the fact that the camera draws close to her, the image has an indistinct haziness that renders her facial expression indiscernable. Her raised arms and general posture give the appearance of a bird about to take flight. This image is followed by the aforementioned Kanazawa, 1978. Fukase, we may surmise, saw Yohko reflected in the ravens he encountered in her home town.

 

The texts published in Camera Mainichi also offer additional important information about the context of the photographs in Ravens. For example, towards the end of the trip to Hokkaido in 1976 after the break with Yohko, Fukase made a photograph that would prove important. It was taken in Erimo Cape and Fukase recalls the event:

 

The raven searching in the dustbins in the rest area remains calm even when I draw close, to within about two meters. It is not scared of the camera. It looks into the lens as if in wonder, and croaks at it. I became a raven with a camera, and played following my black friend who came and went high and low in the thick fog.[8]

 

The raven described here seems to be solitary and composed. In general in Fukase's images, however, the ravens are flying or, when they are not, they are captured in groups. Could the raven referred to in this text be the one in the most widely known image of the series, namely Raven, Erimo Cape, 1976, on page 3?

 

It was on that trip that the ravens became more than a simple motif for Fukase. He discerned himself in them to the point that he imagined himself a raven playing with his "black friends" in the sky. Against the backdrop of the recent end to his marriage, he found his solitary self and his own desolation reflected in the black birds.

 

The series was published in book form in 1986 and his career continued for only another six years. What happened to him after Ravens? Did photography ever provide a solution to his isolation and solitude?

 

After the completion of Ravens, Fukase began photographing himself in the 1990s. He created several series of self-portraits, including BUKUBUKU (1991) and Private Scenes (1990-1991). He obsessively photographed himself to the point of being conscious that it was "almost a disease".[9] And when he eventually grew bored of self-portraits in 1992, the subject he returned to was the ravens, just four months before he would have that fateful fall.

 

I got tired of this series, so at present I'm photographing crows. I am shooting the crows with a 1,000 millimeter telephoto lens every day between 4:30 and 5:30 pm when they return to their nest, from the veranda of my office. At the same time, I am doing line drawings, and I am thinking of somehow combining the crows and the line drawings. Ill probably make black-and-white composite photographs first and add color drawing afterward, [10]

 

Those drawings have been recovered only recently. They consist of around one thousand card-sized prints that have been drawn over by hand. Most of the images are of ravens in flight and, given the use of a 1,000 millimeter telephoto lens, each image only shows a single bird. It appears as if Fukase used the telephoto lens to trim out other ravens even when they were Aying in a flock, so that only one was captured in each frame. A note discovered in his archive describes his process of taking these photographs:

 

I've been living my days for the past half a year using a Nikon Fi3 with a motor drive to photograph ravens going back to their nest in Meiji Shrine. I was just killing time.

 

It is chilling to imagine him perched on his balcony, peering through telephoto lens, every single day for half a year. People stand in front of the mirror to see themselves every morning before going to work. Fukase did the same through the telephoto lens of his camera. It was no longer the case that Fukase saw himself reflected in the ravens; he had become a raven.

 

In his last years Fukase not only drew over his raven photographs but also produced drawings. Some of them depict ravens, and others are simply pieces of paper that are blacked out with spiraling lines, but all of them share a certain primitiveness. They could perhaps be understood as random scribbles if there were only a few of them, but in fact hundreds of them have survived. Moreover, recently uncovered negatives indicate that Fukase attempted to juxtapose such drawings with his self-portraits, suggesting that he considered them a part of his oeuvre.

 

The fierce impetus of the lines of the drawings superimposed onto his self-portraits suggest the self-destruction of all that Fukase had built in his life. It is an ending so morbid, and so unspeakably solitary that it is difficult to look at directly. Spirals have no end; they continue for eternity. In these whorls one feels the gaze of the ravens. It is as if the bird with the eyes that are difficult to locate, is staring at us. The more intensely black the drawing, and the more intense the spirals, the croaking voices of that black bird begin to resound, louder and louder.

 

If there was a beginning to this solitude, then it is in this book, Ravens. 

 

 

 

 

1 Yugi which should read Homo Ludens.

2 Camera Mainichi, January 1975, Mainichi Shimbunsha 3100 Photographers. Profiles and Photographs, 1973, Mainichi Shimbunsha

4 Camera Maimichi, August 1982, Mainichi Shimbunsha

5 Camera Maimichi, January 1975, Mainichi Shimbunsha

6 Camera Mainichi, November 1982, Mainichi Shimbunsha

7 Camera Mainichi, November 1982, Mainichi Shimbunsha

8 Camera Mainichi, November 1976, Mainichi Shimbunsha

9 Nippon Camera, March 1992, Mainichi Shimbunsha

10 Aperture No.129, Fall 1992