New Experiment; Old Japan slides, Part I

Me on bike, Japan 1986



Bicycle camping in Japan, 1986. I remember that we set up our tent in a park in this circle of trees in the middle of a city.

















Rice planting

Elemental Japan. Rice. Trees, Mountains. Water. Planting. Thinking in the field. The field has frogs, crickets, birds, sky, rain, worms, humans, rice plants, sunshine. You can see it all in the kanji character for thinking which is composed of a rice field 田 and a heart 心 and looks like this: 思










Me and Fuji-san 富士山

















Me with our little yellow tent


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In 1985, my then partner, Kate, and I decided to sell all of our posessions and go on an "around-the-world bicycle trip" starting from our home in Flagstaff, Arizona. We left on April 25, 1985 in a blizzard. We would camp and cook our own food, living outside and stopping to work jobs when we needed the money. The first leg of our journey took us through Northern Arizona, Utah, Idaho, part of Montana, Washington, British Columbia and Yukon, Canada, and Alaska. On September 11, 1985 we arrived in Japan with our bicycles in boxes. Here is part of the visual story.

These photos are part of an experiment I am doing. I have several boxes of slides from my time living and bicycling in Japan (1985-1988) that I didn't develop until 10-12 years after they were taken (about 20-22 years ago). The slides are mostly blue in tone with the yellows and reds having faded out over time. I am going to experiment by shooting each slide as close as i can with my simple digital camera, playing with angle and light source (window? white paper underneath? adjust color in iPhoto? Leave it as is?). All the slides were taken with an Olympus XA2 35mm camera).

Today, I also found 10 rolls of undeveloped slide film from the Alaska-BC-Yukon portion of my bicycle adventure.... I wonder if any color at all will be left on that film. Probably mostly cyan (blue). Sayonara, yellow and magenta. I've written a little about my Japan experience here--just a beginning. I plan to write more about Japan later. Actually, my Japan experience enters into everything I do and am, so you can "read it" in my art and photos, too. You can see the entire (growing) set of these new old Japan slides here on fickr. Enjoy!