George Orwell wasn’t that far off.  In fact he was off by less than 30 years when he set his novel in 1984.  The year is now 2013 and they are watching.  They are sifting through billions of pieces of data looking for we can only guess at.  They say it is for our own good.  They say they will and have stopped terrorist actions.  That is only a ruse.  Why are so many willing to give up their rights for the illusion of safety?

They now now what our sealed lips are thinking.

They will continue to eat away at our rights until we say ENOUGH!

The Tokyo prefectural elections have six days to go.  The loudspeakers blare throughout my neighborhood, as well, and every nook of massive tokyo.  The promises come.  The lies are spoken.  The picture perfect images are created.  Nothing is as it seems.

Look closely.  Inspect our leaders to the point where the ben day dots break down into their pigmented hues.  There is no truth to be found here.  Only carefully constructed  illusions that will crumble when held up to real scrutiny.

Just another day, another lie, and it is all just politricks.

I wasn’t sure where I was going to post this blog posting, but in the end I decided to put it in the Lucid Thoughts category.  The story goes a little something like this.  A few days ago I get a slew of comments on my Lucid Communications website.  It was great to see that someone combed though my images and picked out sever blog postings to comment on.  This was soon followed up by an email from the photoblogger Harold Maison, over at Black Man in Japan photoblog.  A another expat american photographer, like myself, only he is based in the Shibuya area of Tokyo.

We exchanged some emails back and forth and finally emailed me asking if I by any chance had done some posters.  He attached a an image of Double Lucid Communication wheat pasting posters that he had photographed in Shibuya a few years back.  I was amazed!  Those posters were some that Lucid Communications had put out in Tokyo going on just about 5 years ago.  It was such a synchronous moment.  Here I was doing by blog.  Putting my work into the sometimes endless black holes of cyberspace where Harold comes along and finds my blog.  Not only did he find my blog, but it turns out that he had photographed some of my street art work from years ago.

This illustrates the power that photography has over us.  It was the ability to create communication.  Which is the reason this site is called Lucid Communication and NOT Jacob Schere’s Photography.  Because the process of photography is about interaction.   On one level it is how humans create and communicate with other over space and time through images.  It is important how Harold captured a moment in history that is no more.  That moment only exist in the pixels of his camera’s image.  These pixels had the ability to transverse time and space and connect two expats in Tokyo.  To me that is absolutely astounding.

These are the reasons that I keep on doing what I do.  These are life’s chances that present themselves to us at seemingly random moments in our life.  Make the connections.  Engage each other in that Lucid Communication.

Please take a moment and browse through the website Black Man in Japan.  See Tokyo through Harold’s eyes.

photo courtesy of Harold Maison, of BlackmaninJapan.com photoblog

In case you missed them a few years back, a few other lucid communication, pastings in Tokyo

On my way to meet up with some mates I passes by a poster I have seen many times.  I first photographed it about 2 years ago.  I couldn’t pass up the chance to revisit this image.  It is wedged in between Otemachi and Tokyo station.  There along this old stretch of corridor there hangs a lovely urban forrest.  A constant  reminder to me of the disconnect that we feel living among the concrete, iron and neon of Tokyo.  There is sits on the wall, slowly yellowing, with its leaves never shedding.

the revisit

the original from November, 2008

A few more from the upcoming mayors race in Urayasu.

Time to see through, and seek truth.

Yep!  It is that time of season again.  The time when the citizens of the wealthy enclave of Urayasu head to the polls to vote for their next mayor.  I don’t know maybe its me, or maybe its my age, but I have become so jaded by the political process.  All these slick glossy images don’t pull me in; however, they do pull in my eye, and are captured with my lens.

It is time to rethink the way we are all impacted by politricks.  To deconstruct the images of the clean, and dirty politician, and see them all for what they are.

I don’t mean that everyone on the planet will take ecstasy, I am talking about that the Japanese will go out to cast their ballots in an election.  I hate the noise of the loudspeakers, but I can’t control myself with the political posters.  I love taking them and flipping them.  Subverting them and converting them into an artistic expression.

Get out and vote with your cameras, and brushes.

Next Sunday is the election in Japan.  Until that day arrives we will have to put up with the loud speakered buses at 9 o’clock in the morning.  The silly posters will all come down and we will all go forward with our lives.

Pure fields of colors to delight my inner self.

Enjoy.

It is high time for the political campaigning.  At every station those politricksters are out pressing the flesh with their bleached white gloves.  The posters have been and are being hung across the entire country of Japan.  They all become visual media to be remixed with my lens.

Colors, lines, fragments take on expressions that challenge there sincereness in which those politicians are portraying themselves.  But we all know better, don’t we?

Take what you see, and flip it like a giant flap jack.

Flip it baby, flip it!

A snap election has been ordered here in Japan after the new prime minister Kan took over a few weeks ago.  The election will take place on July, 11th 2010.  Only two weeks of campaigning are allowed.  At least that saves our ears from the endless loudspeakers that roam the neighborhoods asking us to vote for their politrickster.  Another good point is that there is a lot less money wasted on the campaigning than the pornographic amounts wasted back in the states.

The best thing for me as a photographer are the political posters.  I just love to have fun with them.  They are up all over the place and are put up on specially erected boards that each party has an assigned space.  I love to get in there with my lens and abstract, pervert the already perverted message that the politicians are trying to portray.

They have no real power.  Only the illusion of real power because “we the people” have given in to them.  The people are not ready for real change, because real change will mean heartaches.  Therefore in the meantime, as the humidity and the heat rise so does the foul stench of politics.  In return I will strive to take such ugliness and turn it into an expression.

Don’t give in to the politricksters illusions.  Go out and fight the real fight.

The sun shone high for a little bit today, but soon to the relief of many the clouds rolled in and the light dimmed.  The tones, and hues really began to pop.  The shadows lengthened as the sun began to set.

A lovely early summer day.

I hope we have more like today before the terrible muggy rainy weather hits.

Think positive thoughts, and enjoy the bounty of summer.

The sun was warm, and the air was unseasonably cool.  I am loving these early summer days.  This must be what they mean by an English summer.  The sun warms you, but if you start to overheat, just grab a spot in the shade and you’ll be just fine.

In this lovely weather I strolled around some of the sleepy, old parts of Urayasu.  The little snack bars still in the afternoon.  The empty fishing market stalls, that have only a few that actually still open for business.

Time rushes forward at a blinding speed. I am thankful for the opportunities to slow down and explore.  A time to savor those beautiful things that interconnect and make up our lives.

Ever connected.  Ever rusting.  Ever beautiful.

The sun came out with a vengeance today.  After a few days of rain the mercury hit a high of about 30 degrees Celsius or 87 degrees Fahrenheit.  Not a record breaker yet, but it could be a sign of a long hot summer to come.

I was able to enjoy some of the sunshine on my face as I wandered around Tsudanuma in the long afternoon shadows of this late spring day.  Finding what little treasure that lay ahead.  Those backstreets where the red light district meets quiet suburbs.  All nestled in between the tracks and the asphalt.  All trying to find the space to breathe.

Houses in such a state of decay that no one lives in them anymore.  Store fronts so faded there is only a hint of their vivid past.

Wander, loose one’s self.

Find those treasures.

What ever they might be hiding.

I was intrigued by the distinctly feminine aspect of this political poster.  It was covered with pink, purple and lavender patches of camouflage.  I guess it might be from the the Woman’s Party here in Japan.  Trying to reach out to their base.

Abstracted, removed from it’s context. By inverting the viewer’s view on the sign’s designed to get the people to vote for a political candidate, I hope to inspire beauty in their political constructs, and construct a new world based on beauty and love.  These might seem like lofty goals, but we as one people must strive together for a better world.  We must not let the ugliness impede our lofty goals of creating more beauty.

Seek it out, find that beauty that is out there.  Do not let the mass media tell you how terrible the world is.  Go out there and find the goodness in the world.

These political posters of Japan just won’t leave me alone.  Anywhere I go I cannot escape them.  The cold two dimensional eyes stare into my three dimensional eyes. Our eye lines meet, but the event is only recorded in my mind, and then on my pixels.  I want to move in close.  I want to flip the script of what they are trying to convey.  Subvert their message.  Turn propaganda into an artist expression.

This is why the posters won’t leave me alone.  They are telling me that there is still work to be done.

So, lets get it DONE.