"Truth is stranger than fiction."
Shin Noguchi, one of Japan's leading street photographers, was born in Tokyo and has spent about twenty years photographing the streets from his home in Kamakura. He is known for catching ordinary yet remarkable moments of daily life with an eye entirely his own.
Noguchi has long taken that line from Mark Twain as his photographic creed. For him, photography starts from the belief that the real moments we stumble on in life are far more dramatic and beautiful than any staged fiction. His pictures show timing and composition so precise they look set up in advance, yet every one is a split second that actually happened, caught exactly.
A man clowning with a goofy face outside a subway window shares a frame with an office worker nodding off from exhaustion. Soldiers with stern faces end up framed, by chance, beyond a children's ride. In his pictures the everyday and the out-of-the-ordinary cross, and an odd humor and irony run through them.
Noguchi wants his photographs to hold objective truth. On the street he keeps his own feelings out of it as much as he can and concentrates on the moment as it is. The pictures that result carry universal stories anyone can relate to, which is why his work reaches people far beyond Japan.
He shoots mainly in color, a choice made to record Japan's particular palette faithfully. In a Japanese street photography scene long dominated by black and white, Noguchi uses color to bring out how bright and alive the country's streets are. He favors Leica cameras and film, and his pictures carry the warm, soft feel that film gives.
He is also known for working with great care and patience. He can walk the streets all day and take only a few frames, spending his time waiting for the right moment. He never shoots covertly or from the hip. His rule is to make eye contact with his subjects. It is an attitude of respect and consideration, and it gives his photographs their warmth.
A Conversation with Shin Noguchi
Please introduce yourself. What have you enjoyed photographing lately, and what do you want to say through your pictures?
Hello, I'm Shin Noguchi. I was born in Tokyo in 1976 and now live in Kamakura. I'm a street photographer working mainly around Kamakura and Tokyo.
What I love photographing most these days is the ordinary everyday scenery of Kamakura and Tokyo, places I've belonged to for a long time. I have no interest at all in work where you can see the result coming, like taking a 'photogenic picture' at a 'photogenic spot.' I almost never ask myself "Where should I go to get a good shot?"
The message I want my photographs to carry is simple. "You are never alone. Someone is surely watching over you as you struggle to live in this society."
By catching extraordinary moments in the gaps of daily life, I want people to feel the very idea of 'the everyday' anew. I hope they realize that everyone is already an important 'individual.'
Your photographs feel warm and natural. What state of mind, when you look at other people, do you think turns into that warmth?
I don't press the shutter out of calculation, like "I need this scene." The camera goes off the moment I 'feel' something in what's in front of me. Underneath that is a wish: "I want to affirm your existence."
I can't know everything about my subjects' backgrounds or circumstances, but even so I want to tell them, "You, here right now, are truly beautiful." Even if I can't say it in words, I hope it reaches them in the form of a photograph.
In the end, I think taking pictures is a process of affirming other people's existence and, at the same time, affirming my own.
You seem to have a knack for unexpected humor and irony, like the photo where a man dozing on a bench overlaps with a figure in an ad. How do you look at scenes like these, and what do you think humor and irony add to your work?
I want to share these beautiful moments with more people. I hope they realize that "extraordinary moments are hidden everywhere in everyday life."
I want to prove Mark Twain's words, "Truth is stranger than fiction," through photography. My goal is to capture people's resilience, even the way they can be graceful and a little ridiculous at once, so that viewers sense the 'contradictions' that people and society carry.
I see humor and irony as an important way of showing how complex and rich daily life is. It isn't criticism. It's an affirmation of being human.
Eight More Questions in Vol.02
The interview doesn't stop here. Cinematic moments with his family, what it's like to wait on the street for that split second, the difference between digital and film, and how Shin Noguchi would cast Kamakura and Tokyo as film genres. The remaining eight questions unfold slowly on paper.
The Remaining Eight Questions, on Paper
The full Shin Noguchi interview, along with the photographs he drew from Kamakura, Tokyo and Zushi Beach, appears in the 〈Interview〉 chapter of 5ft magazine Vol.02. Together with the cinematic light of Cinestill 800T.
