Jeffe Simons

Profile

Best known for his writing and commentary about architecture and urban design, Australian-born Jeffe Simons is also a dedicated visual artist and documentarian. During the 12-month period between October of 2002 and September 2003, Simons literally photographed every building, street and bridge in the city of Ichikawa, Japan - a sprawling Tokyo suburb or 'bed town' that is home to 500,000 people. In addition to exploring the structure and aesthetics of the city as a whole, his work reveals the way each building and street is also part of an individual story.

Interview with Jeffe Simons by Seth High for ArchT Quarterly

SH: What was the original impetus for the Ichikawa Architecture Project?

JS: At first, it was just something dramatic and large that I suddenly felt would be fun to do. However, by the time I actually got around to begin photographing, I had a pretty good understanding of the factors that had driven me to this project. I think it all started when I read Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities'. We naturally want to consider each city as a single entity even though they are actually made up of countless smaller geographies and mysterious enclaves. Few cities are dominated by a singular architectural style or consistent spatial congestion. For example, we might say that New York is a city of skyscrapers even though most of the outer boroughs are dominated by brick tenements. Even in Manhattan, less than 2% of the buildings qualify as skyscrapers. New York is also a city of dark wharfs, white cube galleries, ganglands, luscious parks and industrial wastelands. To those who have never been there, New York becomes a city of the imagination - beautiful to some and terrifying to others. I wanted to use Ichikawa in the same way that Calvino uses Venice - a physical starting point for a city of the imagination. My discovery of Invisible Cities also happened to correspond with a disgust I was feeling for coffee table publications that offered a stereotypical and romanticized image of architectural styles and geography - the bullshit that is 'London Lofts' and 'Tuscan Farmhouses'. I wanted a real city. I wanted a whole city.

SH: You mentioned earlier that you also wanted to create a document with historical value.

JS: Exactly. This was before Google Earth and Google Street and Google Everywhere - before satellites and trucks began photographing everything with indifference. My view is historical in that it documents a specific time and place. However, and very importantly, it is also an historical document of passion. I focused on the parts of the buildings that I found most interesting. I tried to not only tell stories of the buildings and their inhabitants, but also create my own story - the foreigner who spends a year walking through the suburbs of a strange new land. Soon after finishing the project, I gave complete DVD sets of the photos to the city hall and local history museum. They said thanks but didn't seem too excited. Just wait 50 years.

SH: Why did you choose Japan and more specifically Ichikawa?

JS: I had already received my visa to do some research in Japan, which was a hotbed of new architecture in the 90s - Shigeru Ban, Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima, and Masamichi Katayama - just to name a few. I had to be in Japan. I chose Ichikawa based on the recommendations of a friend and due to the fact it met all of my criteria - a typical and non-descript Tokyo bed town, home to at least 300,000 people, and so on. Ichikawa is also a city in the modern sense - it is a political and not a cultural entity. It doesn't grow out of a center. Instead, it's political borders incorporate a band of coastal factories, a traditional residential belt, a conglomeration of modern apartment towers, several station-centered shopping districts, a cluster of bamboo shaded temples and even a slowly disappearing agricultural community. As I said, the 'modern city'.

SH: Speaking of modernity, this was your first time to work with a digital camera?

JS: This was another major motivation for the project. I think Robert Rauschenberg made a famous quote about wanting to photograph America one foot at a time. However, he soon gave up on the idea when he realized it was impractical and impossible. Advances in digital technology have made large-scale photographic projects like mine possible - both economically and logistically. Not only would film be too expensive, there would be no practical means for editing, storing and presenting the results. I started the Ichikawa Architecture Project at about the time that digital cameras became both affordable and technically proficient. I even looked at the project as a chance to test out the benefits of going digital. However, I took little 'technical' interest in the photography itself. All 30,000 images were photographed with low-resolution hand-held digital cameras. None of the images were cropped or edited in any way. Single images were not meant to be 'precious' or representational of the entire project - which I originally considered 'conceptual' in nature.

SH: You mentioned both logistics and presentation. How do you go about presenting such a massive work? I mean, explaining the concept is probably difficult enough.

JS: Yes and no. There is a lot of flexibility. I have shown or explained the work to a wide variety of people - architects, visual artists, curators, historians, anthropologists, and even to the local residents of Ichikawa. Each audience renews the project and brings out a fresh angle - new questions and new explanations. The hardest thing is when I am put on the spot by a difficult question such as, "Do you see it as a visual project or a conceptual project." It is so entirely both. When I'm photographing, I become crazy about images. Likewise, when I'm not taking pictures, I'm crazy about ideas. But as far as presentation - I mean visually, I have so many options when showing the work. I have often done it as a slideshow. At a gallery in Switzerland, the photos were projected simultaneously on 4 walls for the 3 week duration of the show. No images were shown twice. The exhibition catalogue and my website try to balance text with enough images to get the main ideas across. However, I'm always afraid that the images I choose to represent the project will be misconstrued as an attempt at choosing 'greatest hits'. This is why historians and social scientists always receive the whole package on a set of DVDs. That's the work.

SH: When you were working on the project, what was a typical day like? How much time did you spend each day walking and photographing?

JS: Generally, I tried to stick to a work pattern - 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This didn't mean I was walking 8 hours everyday. I would estimate 5 hours of walking and 3 hours downloading, burning images to disc and writing. I took lots of breaks. During seasons with longer days, I typically took more photographs. Of course, I had many research trips and other responsibilities during the year I spent in Japan - so the project didn't consume my whole life. Nevertheless, I lost about 10 kilograms over the course of the year thanks to the exercise - which was actually another goal I had for the project.

SH: Each day, how did you choose where to photograph. Did you photograph from east to west or did you start in the center and work outwards? Did you have a good map?

JS: I enlarged a good map that I got from city hall and tacked it to my wall. Each day, I marked off with a red marker the streets and areas I had covered. It gave me a sense of accomplishment and showed me how much further I had to go. As far as choosing where to shoot each day, nothing was pre-decided. My red marks on the map at first looked like little islands all over the city. If I, for example, tried to photograph Ichikawa from south to north, I would be spending two consecutive months in industrial areas. It was refreshing to bounce around. Sometimes I would spend the morning walking down dirt farming roads and the afternoon dodging cars near a major shopping mall.

SH: How did the locals take to your project? Did you make some friends?

JS: I saw some familiar faces but made very few acquaintances. Remember that Ichikawa is 60 square kilometers in area. The people I got to know the best were the shop clerks at businesses I frequented and the local police. About once a week, nearly 50 times in total, I was stopped by police officers who checked my ID and asked me what I was up to. With few foreigners in Ichikawa, people were naturally suspicious when they saw a white guy walking around taking pictures of houses and buildings. I think many of them called the police.

SH: Did anyone confront you directly?

JS: On numerous occasions. I always made a point to politely explain what I was doing when anyone asked. However, some people would get upset and threaten to hit me if I photographed their homes. I would explain that I could photograph anything I wanted from public property and usually they would just curse at me and go away. I'm glad that I didn't understand Japanese so well. The insults didn't really affect me. Only once was I chased - luckily I got away unscathed. Though it wasn't done on purpose, over the course of the year I was also hit by 3 bicycles and clipped by a car. I sprained my wrist and broke my camera when one of the bicycles collided with me.

SH: Ouch. What was the hardest part of the project? Also, what was most rewarding?

JS: The whole process was rewarding, as was finally completing the project. When I was in elementary school, I remember watching movies in science class that explained human anatomy by giving you an internal tour of the body with a little camera. Venturing around Ichikawa was like that. I really got to experience the city in a fresh new way. Each house and street offered new mysteries that got my mind thinking, that got my imagination spinning. How could people live like this? Why did people live like this? As far as negatives, the bad air of the industrial section and harassment from the police were the only things that really marred my experience. But I would recommend living in Japan to almost anyone - good food, friendly people and a stimulating culture.

SH: If you go back to Ichikawa in 10 years, how much do you think you will recognize.

JS: Unfortunately not much. My relationship with the city was intense but short. You know that this is a topic that I have long been interested in - the way we acquaint ourselves with architecture and geography to survive. There are always new architectures for me to invest in. Psychologically, I knew that my engagement with Ichikawa was short-term. How could I be truly committed to a space that I knew I would probably never return to? Moreover, urban surroundings have to be flexible and accommodating to a changing population in order to last. Japan's perspective on architecture combined with its relative wealth creates a tendency to want to tear down and rebuild rather than create a flexible and sustainable system. Time is not kind on the country's buildings, roads, and farmland. Japan's transitive nature has created 'sentimentality cycles' that are astoundingly short.

SH: In a way, this constant change validates your project. Documentation becomes even more important when you know something won't last.

JS: I like to think so. I mentioned earlier that my project might be of interest to a wider audience in 50 years time. However, I don't think it will be that long before people in Japan look back nostalgically on 2002.