Sumo

Chris Steele-Perkins

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.

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Northern Exposures

Chris Steele-Perkins

As I have another book out I thought I'd post again to follow up on my Tokyo Love Hello and Korean Comfort Women ones, and respond to your comments - sorry for the long delay if anyone is still out there - most were very positive, so thanks a lot for that feedback. (Rafal there is a Magnum book of new work on Korea coming out. Daniel and Alok, an interesting idea to photograph the perpetrators, but few are now alive and I am sure would not come forward.)

Front cover of Chris Steele-Perkins' new book Northern Exposures. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos

This is the cover of the new book, Northern Exposures. Its in B&W and about Rural Life in the North East of England; County Durham to be precise.

Why B&W? It was great to change modes - it is also in medium format, on Mamiya 7s mostly - and to adopt a slower more contemplative approach than towards the frenetic urban life of Tokyo. It was shot in some of the same time frame as Tokyo too. I like to keep plugging away at my own country, exploring England at the same time I am exploring foreign places. Maybe it keeps you rooted. But the answer to why it is B&W is nothing more complex than I wanted to. It just felt right.

What started it off? It all started from a small commission from Side Gallery in Newcastle who were working on a larger group project on Durham Coalfields, the onetime heartland of the defunct British coal-mining industry. Once I got started I found myself hooked into it, in Cartier-Bresson's phrase, it got between the shirt and skin, and I decided to continue working on it for my own interest.

Continue reading 'Northern Exposures'

Contemporary Global Slavery

Chris Steele-Perkins

Jang Jum Dol was 14 and on the way to do laundry when she was taken by a Japanese man and told she was going to a factory to make money, but she was tied up in a house with an 11-year-old girl and then taken with some other girls to Manchuria. She tried to escape and was captured and beaten and kept at a sex station for the Japanese military which was surrounded by a wire fence. She had three children there and two of them died, the surviving girl had a weak heart. When she came back to Korea with her daughter after the war she was so poor they had to sleep in the streets. Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos

2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. However, two hundred years later, it is estimated that 27 million people across the globe are still enslaved. To help raise awareness of this ongoing human rights crisis, Autograph ABP has commissioned nine Magnum photographers to document slavery as it exists around the world in the anniversary year of its abolition. A major exhibition of the work will open at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2008, and will include work on bonded labourers, child labourers, trade slavery, people trafficking, and domestic and sex slavery. Chris Steele-Perkins shares his experience of photographing "Comfort Women" in Korea for the project.

I am sitting in a fire station in South Korea waiting for an incident on the quietest day of the year - so it seems an appropriate moment to write something briefly as it was in South Korea at the end of last year that I did my work for the Slavery project photographing Comfort Women.

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What in fact DO you want to say?

Chris Steele-Perkins

With my new book Tokyo Love Hello being launched, I thought it might be interesting to some of you out there to get an idea of what sort of issues, problems and questions have gone through my mind during the process of making this book.

How, as a photographer, do you try to put out your work in such a way as to make the most sense to you and, hopefully, to your audience? What in fact DO you want to say?

Front cover of Chris Steele-Perkins' new book Tokyo Love Hello.

Should you do a book, a magazine story, an exhibition, a slide show, a podcast, a Magnum In Motion-style web piece, a combination of these things; all of them? How will this affect the work? An exhibition will create a different response to a book. With a web piece you can use sound, in a magazine you might reach an audience of millions. If you do an exhibition is it like doing the book on the wall? If you do a book is it an exhibition between covers?

Continue reading 'What in fact DO you want to say?'