Remember the start of Spirited Away when the family stumbles upon the crumbling, abandoned amusement park and the dad explains how scores of theme parks were built in Japan in the 90s, and then left to rot when the bubble economy burst? Now also faced with the GFC, Japan is scattered with a higher number than ever of decaying man-built sites reminiscent of more affluent days.
Locating an eerie beauty in these deserted locations is the ongoing photographic documentation of Shibakouen Hamutaro. There’s something very Japanese in this ability to appreciate the aesthetic of transience and the process of decay. In Leonard Koren’s book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers he explains how the notion of completion has no basis in the traditional Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic because all things are either evolving from or devolving to nothingness.
A beauty of things imperfect, irregular, impermanent, rustic, incomplete and ambiguous, wabi-sabi is a distinctly Japanese worldview that shows the vulnerability of material things and is in contrast to the Greek ideals of decadence, monumental beauty and perfection that have informed aesthetic values in the West.
Where or Witch is your rss feed to sindicate ¿??¿?
Comment by Benji — August 2, 2009 @ 2:59 amhello, we have added the link on the homepage. thanks.
Comment by admin — August 2, 2009 @ 11:07 pm