Garden of unearthly delights

DIESEL DENIM GALLERY ART EXHIBITION #9, Garden of Unearthly Delights, Timothy Saccenti from Caroline Celis on Vimeo.

THE DIESEL DENIM GALLERY AOYAMA is presenting the first solo exhibition of Timothy Saccenti: "Garden of unearthly delights".

Tim is a notable new talent making photography and videos for people like Battles, Erykah Badu and the Animal collective. In this exhibition he will create a new series of moving images and print exclusively for the DIESEL GALLERY AOYAMA.

Here is a description of the project:

"A genesis story of meaning, existence and purpose, "Garden of unearthly delights", follows a simple creature meandering through life in darkness, believing itself to be the only in existence. When the creature sees a mask lying in the darkness, it gains knowledge of time and space. Experiencing a moment that is different from the last sets one event apart from the next. Sensing a figure independent from its own movement allows the creature to understand its size in relation tothe world and to other things. Putting the mask on, the creature loses its blindness an sees a symbol in the sky representing purpose. The creature follows a path reminiscent of life toward the symbol in the sky. In a clearing below the light, a tree sits making an allusion to the tree of Life. In its branches hangs a starnge pod: a seed of life. A pregnant creature emerges from the darkness and performs a mating ritual with the first creature. A child is born from the creature's realization of a perfect counterpart and an affinity towards the tree and the fruit. The desire of the creatures and the need to fulfill a pirpose begets the image of new life. As the child is born, the creatures become immune to gravity representing a contented resolution to their life and purpose."


Some of Tim's work:




For this exhibition as for some previous works, Tim uses objects design and developed by our friends at commonwealth, check Tim's website clicking here

Gangs of Kabukicho by Watanabe Katsumi

I found the post about Watanabe Katsumi on The Moment blog, really liked the imagery and wanted to share it with you...


Despite recent attempts at gentrification, Kabukicho in the East Shinjuku section of Tokyo remains the city’s seedy underbelly. In the event that it ultimately goes the sanitized way of 42nd Street, the photographer Watanabe Katsumi’s book, “Gangs of Kabukicho” (D.A.P.), is a divinely decadent chronicle of the area’s hostess-bar and yakuza heyday.



Watanabe, who died of stomach cancer in 2006, was an itinerant who made a measly living — during one low point he gave up photography altogether and sold sweet potatoes on the sidewalks — shooting the dissolute denizens of Kabukicho, including the “blue-light” district’s many drag queens, prostitutes and gangsters. (Watanabe would photograph his subjects and return the following evening to deliver the prints, for which he received a small fee.)


Most of the black and white photographs in “Gangs of Kabukicho” were originally printed in a tiny 1972 self-published book and later shown in Watanabe’s only exhibition, in 1986. These effortlessly stylish images caught the attention of the New York gallerist Andrew Roth, who flew to Tokyo to meet with the photographer weeks before his death. “Watanabe was not well known at all,” says Roth, who is now the caretaker of the Watanabe estate, “but, by their own admission, Japanese photography stars like Keizo Kitajima, Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama are all indebted to him. Hopefully this book shows that Japanese street photography did not start with the current interest in Harajuku and gives Watanabe the recognition he did not enjoy in life.”

“Gangs of Kabukicho” by Watanabe Katsumi is distributed by D.A.P. and is available at artbook.com and amazon.com.