Being There... A Retrospective Exhibition of Silver Halide Photography
by Michael E. J. Stanley
Main Bar
June 3 - June 30
38 years ago, I arrived in Japan and thought I might end up working here for a while. It seems like that happened yesterday. It was the right place at the right time; I found a demand for my photographic skills and the economy was booming. Editorial clients - among them most of the major Japanese magazine publishers - offered me assignment work in places I had only dreamed about visiting. The images displayed in this exhibition are drawn from various assignments and projects both within Japan and overseas; they are obviously only a tiny fraction of what I shot over a span of 30+ years. A greater variety - both in the number of images and in the variety of topical "genres" - is presented on my website, www.mejstanley.com.
All of the photographs here were shot in analog format using 35mm monochrome negative or color reversal film; something now rare in this new world of instant digital imagery. A lot has changed in recent years, and the analog world is fading away. Film with a silver halide-based emulsion is edging toward the ranks of the bygone where it will join wet-plate glass negatives and tintypes.
Please consider yourself heartily welcomed to this exhibition; I hope visitors will enjoy taking a moment to view the photos on display and perhaps imbibe a bit of the atmosphere of the places and moments shown, a sense of 'being there'.
Michael E. J. Stanley was born in Santa Monica, California. When still in his early teens, he began studying photography under the tutelage of his father, Hollywood cinematographer Frank W. Stanley A.S.C. At the same time, his interest in things Asian began to grow, and in his university years he concentrated on ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics of the Asia-Pacific region. In 1979, he arrived in Japan and began to settle in, working with a variety of Japanese periodicals. At first, his work centered on only still photography, but soon expanded to cover both the images and the article writing as well. Notable Japanese magazines such as Brutus, Sinra, Sports Graphic Number, Bungei Shunju, Shukan Bunshun, and Mainichi Graph were among his clients. In the 1990s, he began shooting documentary video for the Fuji Television Network, and in 1998 he began teaching at the university level - at first at Tama University and then at Meiji University.
The Exhibition Committee