Magnum Blog / Sumo

Sumo

Japan. Tokyo. Sumo wrestler Sentoryu ( real name Henry Miller) from USA retires. This means cutting the hair which was worn in a top-knot. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos Sumo intrigued me more and more as I started to come to Japan. Before I had seen a live tournament, and had begun to appreciate it as skilled and strangely graceful, I knew about it as all westerners do: fat people wearing a sort of nappy and fighting. It intrigued me because it evolved uniquely in Japanese culture to become the form that it is. It is only practiced professionally in Japan, though it has a developing amateur following around the world. The aim is simple: to force the opponent to step out of the ring (doho) or make them touch part of their body, other than the feet, on the ground. Bulk is important to resist being thrown or pushed and so is strength. Under the fat there is a lot of muscle, and, technique is essential. It interested me too because it is unusual for a combat sport not to involve the subugation of one by the other: being beaten unconscious, submitting in pain, being pinned to the ground, and it is unusual for the combat not to be broken into rest periods and to involve some kind of scoring system, but in sumo its over when its over. One slip, one small loss of balance, one mistimed thrust and it can be lost. Normally an individual contest will last less than a minute. Add to that the elaborate rituals performed by judges, cleaners, and the sumotori themselves, which take far longer than the bout itself, and it is like no other sport. This is a picture of sumo, but not of the obvious kind. My caption in my book is minimal - Retirement ceremony for sumotori Sentoryu. The red and the gold screen indicate it is Japan, but that is it. Sentoryu is in a suit and coming to the end of a long ceremony where his peers pay their respects to him and each snips a small piece of his hair from his head. This was also done by members of his family. The final cut that takes off the distinctive top-knot worn by sumotori is made by the oyakata, the owner of Sentoryu's fighting stable. It is the offical end of his career. In the photograph this ritual is over and he has come back to the stage after having his head shaved and changing into a western suit. He wipes his head and his eyes, it has been an emotional experience. He is no longer Sentoryu (fighting war dragon) but Henry Miller, a black american from St Louis who had spent 15 years wrestling in Japan. Links: » Chris Steele-Perkins Website » Chris Steele-Perkins' Magnum Portfolio » Chris Steele-Perkins' Books (Signed from the Magnum Store)

Joe

It’s difficult to associate this image with this topic Chris. I’d even go so far to say that without a single sentence augmenting its circumstance this would just be a pretty picture; it’s full of yummy tones, a pleasing composition and a suggestive piece of human condition, but without the caption, in my opinion, it’s just that.

I don’t mean to sound crass Chris, exactly the opposite really. I preface this because this image makes me think hard how impossible it must be to avoid all the clichés that exist with a topic most people have existing ideas about. It makes me wonder how hard it is to tease out an image that make you rethink something you might think you know all you need to know about…. but maybe you don’t and now you want to know more.

It also makes me think how far you can stretch what we find to be recognisable subject matter for a topic, but still make it relevant. I think you’ve proven with this tense stretch comes a nice thought provoking snap with the need of only a caption. This also makes me think more that captions aren’t crutches, if used strategically they’re more like scissors cutting the band of initial perception and jarring you to a new one.

This image with this caption makes me think that captions are most effective when they don’t re-enforce what you first see, but actually surprise you based on what you first concluded. I first thought this was a fat judge overheating from the lights of a small town fashion show… imagine my paradigm shift and the sensation that comes with it after reading the caption?

As far as revisiting topics filled with clichés... topics people know nothing about are pretty rare. I think that’s why there’s such a preoccupation with photographers and sub-cultures.... maybe sub-culture projects are crutches ;-)…. but topics that seem fairly understood are typically shunned by photographers… tell someone you’re going to do a project on nightlife and you’ll almost hear immediately, ‘that’s been done to death!’ This image with this topic makes me think that maybe there’s loads of morsels left on topics we think we know all we need to know about.
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Bob Black

Chris:

it's a brilliant picture, given the context of the sport...emotionally, it clues us into a moment and a context and a spiritual understand that few of us who know anything about the sport (i used to love watching it on ABC's Wild World of Sports when i was a kid) would have understood other than all that gorgeous and abstract gesturing before and during and after a "battle"....it also clues us into the silence and emotional Meditation of these "dragons".......and he looks so incredibly vulnerable and, not powerless, but assailed...it's a great image full of contraction (akin, in a way, to gilden's yatzuka, the gentle yatzuka) and like Samson before the temple walls collapse...

i also love the visual aesthetic....

as I mentioned at the Magnum PHoto/Paintings Post, your work reminds me often of the paintings of Mt. Fuji by the great Katsushika Hokusai...here, your photograph, this sumo warrior is another Mt. Fuji

the pic tied to these two:

your pic of fuji: LON15482

and this one:

http://tinyurl.com/5dsdrl

would love to see more from the Sumo series...

cheers
bob

Bob black

Joe:

insightful comment but also isn't it our "obligation" (maybe too strong a word) to stretch the way we see and the way we describe, to begin with. The world anew isn't new because someone (photographer, writer, singer, barber, child) sees the world differently from another but because, a priori, we each manage and navigate the same sensorial experience remarkably differently and that kind of collision (another's vision in contact with our own expectation) lay at the heart of all good description or evocation...and what else is photography if not evocation...

that photography must remain amibiguous because the way we experience the world is no less ambiguous for is not our place in the ring of things the mad attempt to understand...imagine all those passing moments and people and situations that glare there far out along the periphery of our visual and emotional experience (try, try to take in the entire world by standing in one place for 1 minute, and it becomes apparent that the world is a tsunami of detail that we never never clue in or swallow let alone meditate upon) that elude us...

you are right that a great "caption" can be like a great line a poetry (in this case, maybe haiku) as it can be an ephiphany rather than a description (as if most often used with photography, unfortunately), but does it always have to provide us a gateway or a clearing into the "truth" of a photo?....

for me, i loved the picture and the title and i was trying to figure out exactly what was going on...at first i thought he might have been a sumo wrestler at the funeral of another wrestler....

chris' details are brilliant and absolutely the kind of information i hunger for after a photograph has challenged me and enticed me to want to know more/learn more...

though i've never ever understood when others say "that's been done to death"...unless that person is only trying to reproduce the work as seen before...and then again...

dont we all, generation after generation, tell the same stories to one another in order to abait the disappearing...

for me, it's the story telling that matters, the breath, more than the understanding of it :)))

cheers
bob

Rafal Pruszynski

I think its a great shot in many respects. A lot of what Joe says is true but isnt this meant to be part of a larger narrative? A book? That would take care of many of the things Joe raises.

Mahesh Shantaram

In Tokyo Love Hello, this image was simply captioned, "retirement of sumotori Sentoryu". However, the book was such a visually overwhelming experience that I rarely read the terse, even cryptic, captions. I experienced Tokyo in a very different way through that masterly crafted book. Now, Chris writes a whole essay on this one image! Really makes me think...

Emil

The image would have real meaning for me only in the context of a picture story. To me, the subject in the stand alone image suggests that he won some sort of a award and is overwhelmed by his good fortunate. I believe that captions are only necessary if an image doesn't clearly communicate it's true meaning to a viewer at a glance.

federico agostini

BOB

Chris has also a great bunch of very recent photos on the Sumo World Championship held in Estonia here:

http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=Mod_ViewBoxInsertion.ViewBoxInsertion_VPage&R=29YL5302GXN5&RP=Mod_ViewBox.ViewBoxThumb_VPage&CT=Story&SP=Story

Enjoy!

Forest

I've been confused what the relationship between a picture and its caption should be. Thanks for letting me read your comments, Joe and Bob.

Alec Soth

A post today on the subject of captions:

http://www.1mag3.co.uk/entry/166

david bowen

captions, captions.. i relate to the philip cartland blog you posted alec..

it´s a fantastic thing, to get as much information about a photograph which is relevant.. perhaps a caption needs to be much less subjective than the photograph for me.
i like a statement of the facts, which add context and alters the meaning of a piece of work, while i shy away from leading captions.. where the photographer is lending their own meaning to a photograph.

i think both kinds of captioning have value - and know it´s a personal perspective.. however i have never really liked artists taking me by the hand and showing me what they want me to see with words... photos are enough for me.

so - with the CSP photo above with the caption i feel overwhelming empathy for sentoryu.. relating to the moments in my own life when i have closed the book of one age and nervously begun leafing through a new one, unsure of who i might be.. where i might be going and full of idea´s for what i might do...., while being exhausted by the the rush of thoughts at comprehending what has gone before.

and without the caption ... i see a tired bodyguard at some space-aged voting center, where perhaps people have been casting their ballots in the glittering booths behind for the next president of the gamma quadrent.

that´s just me, of course.
david

Chris Steele-Perkins

There are a lot of good points being made, and I'll try to make a few back, but first let me say that there was a reason for putting this blog up that goes beyond this particular image. With Jacob's new book out, Tokyo I, and his blog about Tokyo and how he got started, it seemed interesting to consider that there are 3 current Magnum books on Tokyo in print, and that by getting Bruce to blog about one of his pictures from Go and myself from Tokyo Love Hello, this was an invitation to consider how differently the three of us have approached the "same" subject of Tokyo as well as questioning the role of the outsider coming to photograph a culture they are not fully familiar with and, how successfully , or not, photographs translate experience into book form, and more.

Hovering all over this blog is the role of text/captions/introductions. Early on in photography's history someone (please tell me if you know who), stated that photography described everything but explained nothing.

That seems to be one of photography's fundamental strength: its apparent ability to coexist as Truth, as in - a photograph never lies, and completely flummoxing the viewer - What is that? What is going on? The caption is the bridge between these states and the photographer can choose how to use them in a book. I like Joe's image of the caption as - like scissors cutting the band of initial perception and jarring you to a new one.

Rafal got my point, without seeing the book when asking- isn't this meant to be part of a larger narrative? A book? . Yes, and in the book I specifically did not want to give too much information, I wanted the viewer to see each image in sequence and be baffled or curious in different ways by different images, because that is more or less how I felt taking them and it is nice to know that Marhesh seemed to get the book in that way. I think, in very different ways, the three books all do that: offer ambiguous conclusions.

So, perhaps the caption information does two things: it adds and it subtracts. By adding more information it makes more specific the meaning of the image and it could be argued it takes away some of the intriguing ambiguity that can make photography so interesting. Is the photo better or worse or that.....?.its up to you, but maybe we don't need pages of blog on that one.

One quite different point for Bob and any others. There is a mistake in the captions you get in the link to the other sumo pictures Federico gave. My mistake and its being sorted. There are loads more sumo pics if you just type sumo into the magnum search page, including a real scorcher from Werner Bischof.

Bob Black

CHRIS :)))

nice summation :))...i particularly like "So, perhaps the caption information does two things: it adds and it subtracts."(steele-perkins)...as i said, i think a good caption acts as a poem (haiku: subtraction that leads to addition ;) ), a thread the sinuates more than describes ;)))...anyway, nice explanation...saw the link from Federico and will keep looking :))))...

and it was Honore Daumier who said that about photography describing everything but explaining nothing...but, what do painters know ;)))))...xexe....
.

FEDERICO :))...thanks for the link...particuarly enjoyed seeing the sumo as mass competition pics, and the lady sumo pics...never saw that before...

ok, nice discussion

running
b

Op'

He's on fire. The entire photograph is in flames. His suit's too small and new. He's outside. He's been awarded, a kiss or bruise on his lapel, but he ain't happy. He's thinking, possibly, where now?? And his wrist watch, clicks louder than the colours. Stirring picture.

Op'

Actually, more like he's in fire....how metal warms up.....red into yellow....yellow into white, bottom, up...thanks for posting!!! Great!!

nigel amies

Interesting that you mention the other books on Tokyo by Magnum photogs currently out. haven't seen much discussion on that. I've only looked at Jacob's and those of Chris. What interested me was the different approaches and motivations - the up close and personal stuff Jacob does and his emphasis on the relationships he makes along the way and the much more impersonal approach of Chris. Both are intersting although I find Chris's somehow more like what I've seen of Tokyo before, perhaps more like what I myself have done there in the past. Jacob's work however hardly relates to the city as such, in my opinion. It could just as easily be in the back streets and bars of any big Asian city - Bangkok or Shanghai for example. For a truer feel of the place I like the pictures of photographers like Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. Well, they are natives of the place so they should feel truer.

Doug Wilson

i think the pic is great i actually went to high school with Henry Miller and played football with him. He is a grat guy and comes from a great family.

Nike Kobe IV

This image with this caption makes me think that captions are most effective when they don’t re-enforce what you first see,