Photographs

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Japanese Fisherman

Part of a series of photos and texts that was published as The Good Life in 2014.

What we have here is a museum display model of a Japanese fisherman looking for Octopus and other underwater delicacies. The boat is fixed to a milky plastic sheet and provides us with a view from the shore of the fisherman using a wooden box with a glass window at the bottom of it to get a better view of the sea bed, where he hopes to spear something tasty. Reflected in a mirror above the boat we have a sea gull’s view of the boat and its equipment, and of the fisherman who we learn is kneeling on the boat’s flat wooden boards with his head in a leather hood. Not a lot of extra information is gathered by the reflection and yet it draws us in and gives our imagination a richer image of the scene, we can be both the observer on land and the sea gull at the same time. A simple device which doubles the effect of the model maker’s effort in setting the scene.