Photographer: Melody Friedenthal
Graduate Student, Library Information Studies
“On my last full day in Japan I visited Lake Ashi in the Mt Fuji region. These duck pedal boats seemed rather melancholy.” -Melody Friedenthal
Dan asked Melody a few questions about her trip:
Importance of Traveling:
I would like viewers to get beyond the black-and-white; every place is multivalent, so look beyond the stereotypes and see each nation for the complex entity it is.
What inspired you to travel to Japan?
I have been a Japan-o-phile since I was a little girl. Those pictures of kimono and Shinto shrines looked pretty exotic to a kid from Brooklyn. When I was in college I started learning judo, which introduced me to some Japanese vocabulary. Eventually I started studying the language formally. An old friend of mine lives in Japan and she kept asking me when I was coming to visit but I had kids and I was busy working, and neither the time nor the money were available. As 50 approached, I decided to make the time and save the money. So, a month after I turned 50, along with two close friends, one of whom was also celebrating her 50th birthday, I flew out of Logan Airport for Japan.
What kind of camera do you have? And, what is your background in photography / art?
These photos were taken with a Canon digital camera, an SX100IS, 8.0 mega pixels. I have no background in art or photography.
What experiences do your photographs most dominantly capture? In other words, since the viewers of your photos were not on the trip, what memories of your trip do these photos encapsulate that a viewer would not otherwise know?
I photographed what fascinated me and I tried to get beyond the clichés Westerners tend to think about when they think about Japan. Japan is a dynamic balance of bustling 21st century commerce and technology, interspersed with places of extreme tranquility.
Primarily, I fell in love with Japanese surface design, like the intricate decorations on Japanese manhole covers; I took a lot of photos of those although none are displayed here.
I would like viewers to get beyond the black-and-white; every place is multivalent, so look beyond the stereotypes and see each nation for the complex entity it is.
What other parts of the world have you traveled to? How does your experience in Japan rank in comparison to your other travels?
When I was in college my friend and I backpacked around England and Wales. Then my father and I spent a week on Ambergris Caye in Belize. Years later I honeymooned in Hungary, with a couple of days in Venice, and a journey from Venice to London on the Orient Express. Most recently, last fall my mother and I went on a cruise to the Panama Canal.
I enjoyed all the trips – I consider them glimpses into other cultures and history – but my time in Japan was the most fascinating, a birthday present to myself. We were there for two weeks and I experienced some of the history, religion, culinary arts, architecture, sports and lush natural beauty of two of the islands which comprise Japan, Honshu and Kyushu. Consider: we received a lesson in how to do the tea ceremony, which in Japan is an act of fluid elegance, on the same day we visited the Kodokan, the center for judo in Japan.
Why did you select these 4 photos instead of your others?
Thousands of photographers have shown women in kimono, Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, Zen gardens, and Mt. Fuji; these are beautiful and iconic, but I wanted to show the parts of Japanese life and culture that are not as well known.
What is one message about your photographs, or about Japan, or about anything else, that you wish to convey to the Gallery of Global Photography viewers?
Global travel is good for the mind and for the soul, and we, as Americans, should be as gracious and welcoming to international travelers as the people I met in Japan were to me.
GALLERY OF GLOBAL PHOTOGRAPHY 