Beatrice- Japantown
The pictures I am sharing come from last year in February, when my friend Karin came to visit me in the Bay Area, where I was studying (south of San Francisco.) One day we took off to Japan Town, a mall like composit of Japanese stores, restaurants, bookstores, hairdressers, and other stores. We took these pictures, and I'm still not sure what was going on when we did. In part, we were amused at the self-reflexivity of the place, as it recognized itself as a tourist destination within San Francisco. The cut outs were also reminiscent of another time, of amusement parks or tourist destinations that we had never actually encountered before. (BKG, to you the question, where do these cut out, full body "masks" come from socially and historically?) I am sharing the pictures because they made me think about the staging of tourist photographing and the possibilities for humor in it, which are only tangentially touched upon in our readings on photography.
