Nomura:On the other hand, I have a friend of mine who is always writing crunchy notes. He's playing with people for a book. When he met us, he thought he was going to write something like, "I met a bullshit guy. It's fine if that's their goal, but it's kind of boring, isn't it? Of course, now I would take a job if I could go on a trip (laughs). (laughs) Anyway, when I was just starting out, I had that feeling. It wasn't that I didn't have a story, but that I wanted to go on a trip, so I had to come up with a plan somehow. I wanted to go on a trip, so I came up with a plan somehow. I often meet people who say, "I'm going to shoot this kind of film, so I'm going to attach some other work to it," but I never heard anything about what Yamatani was going to do with the money he raised (through crowdfunding), so I thought that kind of thing was very nice and not phony. That's what I thought.
Mountain Valley:I told people, "Well, I have a lot of luggage, so I have to drive by myself..." But in fact, I was really looking forward to it. I had never toured Europe by car before, and I was longing to do so. I was longing for something like that. I was longing for something like the double-decker tours that Kunichi and his friends had made around Japan.
Nomura:I was afraid that it would be like a travel photo book, but it was different, for better or worse, and I thought, "You are really interesting, Yamatani-kun.
Mountain Valley:I thought about that when you said that, but I have never done photography because I wanted to. I came to Tokyo when I went to university, and after graduation I joined a photography studio, but I quit because I didn't like it. I wanted to see the local side of Japan, and I wanted to see the edges of the country, so I went to Nagasaki. I ended up living there for about a year.
Nomura:Wasn't the master over there?
Mountain Valley:It was there that I happened to meet a photographer named Shomei Tomatsu. However, I had never heard of him in the first place.
Nomura:(Laughs). (Laughs.) Normally, it would have been a beautiful story like, "There is such a person in Nagasaki, so you should go there.
Mountain Valley:At the time, I was at least familiar with Daido Moriyama, but I had not heard of Shomei Higashimatsu due to a lack of education. I was told by the guys around me at the coffee shop that he was great, so I went to show him some of my photos. After that, I had nothing left to do in Nagasaki, so I decided to go to Osaka. I had friends there. I lived there for a little less than a year and took pictures for my first photo collection, "Tsugi no yoru e.
Before I got there, I wandered around Europe, and at that time I thought to myself, "Hey, I knew someone who took pictures while wandering around overseas. That is Mr. Nagoshi, who is here today (laughs). (Laughs.) Mr. Nagoya-san, I remembered that he went to a squat, and I heard that he was staying at a place that offered free accommodation.
Nomura:No, to sum it up, yes, although squatting is never a free place to stay (laughs).
Mountain Valley:First, I went to London. I heard it was a Mecca for backpackers. However, it was the year before the London Olympics, and squatting was being suppressed by government policy.
Nomura:It was much, much earlier when there were lots of squats in London. Even when I was there, there were no more squats left in the city. I think it started during Thatcher's reign.
Mountain Valley:I wonder if Thatcher closed one and added another after that.
Nomura:I think it started about the time Thatcher was there, and by the time Oasis and others came along and the economy was improving, it was almost gone.
Mountain Valley:A friend of mine was living over there in the mid-2000s and told me that punks and others were having parties at squats and such. I heard that, so I went there.
Nomura:That would not be in the middle of London.
Mountain Valley:I heard there was one around Elecas (Elephant and Castle), so I went to visit there and there happened to be a huge crowd that day. There happened to be a lot of people there that day, and the music was blaring. I thought, "Wow, squatting sounds like a lot of fun," but it turned out to be a good-bye party that day (laughs). (Laughs.) While everyone seemed to be having a great time, there was one Japanese person who didn't talk to anyone.
Nomura:(Laughs). (Laughs.) After that kind of thing died down in London, Germany and Holland became the home of this kind of thing. After that, I think it moved to Eastern Europe.
Mountain Valley:Yes, it did. It seems that Germany got tougher, then Spain, Portugal, etc., and then down south. I stayed at a squat in Milan for about 3 weeks in 2013. It was a place for anarchists (anarchists), so they had farms, animals, and so on. I took photos and made a zine and showed it to my friends back in Japan. I felt that this was what a zine should look like. You gave that to Mr. Kobayashi at first, right?
Kobayashi:Yes, I got it, I got it.
Mountain Valley:Even then, I thought this kind of photography was nice, but here was a master (Keisuke Nagoshi) who could not be surpassed.
Nagoshi:LOL!
Mountain Valley:I've seen this technique before! (laughs).
Kobayashi:That's the kind of thing I'm cool with.
Nomura:It's like a dog's intuition. If you go this way, you'll be eaten.
Kobayashi:Wherever you go, can you just slip in?
Mountain Valley:No I couldn't do that. You can do that, can't you, Mr. Nagoya? I was alone all the time. I also went to Christiania in Copenhagen, because I heard it was a hippie town and it was nice and loose.
Nomura:Christiania. There are a lot of beautified parts, aren't there? I had heard a lot of stories and fantasized about it before I went, but it's not quite what I had heard.
Mountain Valley:I see. But I had never seen a place like that, and I was there for about three weeks. I thought that if I wandered around every day, I would make friends with someone and they would let me stay there, but in the end I didn't make friends with anyone and ended up sleeping in a sleeping bag on the side of the house every day (laughs). There's a lake in the middle, and it's really beautiful.
Nomura:I like the fact that they went that far and no one approached them, and again, the story does not come together in a beautiful way (laughs). Normally, you would tend to say, "I made friends right away, got in, had a great experience, and here is a picture of it," but that's not the case at all (laughs).
Mountain Valley:That's right. But I have always loved to travel. After that, I traveled around Asia and Indonesia for a bit. There were a lot of punks there who got paid for playing guitar. I became good friends with them, but I felt something was different about them. From then on, I rarely went abroad by myself. I also got married.
Nomura:I agree. When you get married and have children, it becomes very difficult. People say, "Isn't this just for fun?
Mountain Valley:This time, I had to convince my wife, "Look, I got paid, and I have to make a photo book.
Nomura:I said, "Bullshit, you really just wanted to go on tour (laughs).
Mountain Valley:That was a secret story (laughs).
Nomura:I can't go now, but do you still want to go on tour every year?
Mountain Valley:When I got back from Europe, I thought, maybe the next tour will be in the U.S. Now I'm getting the itch again. Now I am getting excited again. But this work is a good thing that we decided to do a tour, but actually, we weren't sure how we were going to do it. I don't have a band, and I don't have a booking manager. So I picked the countries I wanted to visit, and if I knew someone in the country, I asked that person to help me, and if not, I asked someone to introduce me.
These people curated and coordinated the events, and one by one, they decided on the date and location that would work best for us. As a result, we decided on seven locations. There are places that are called "art clubs" over there. Artists express themselves, DJs come and hold music events, and so on. We would hold events at such places. We also held events in conjunction with international photo fairs.
The most impressive place for me was Berlin. There was an art fair called "Art Berlin" where galleries from all over the world gathered, and I went there to coincide with the fair. I heard rumors that Berlin is a very relaxed city, so I thought I could do it as a guerrilla. After talking with local people, it sounded like something I could do, so I did it. We did it in the parking lot at the opening party, ba-ba-ba-ba in 10 minutes. When we were done, a staff member came up to us and said, "It's an art fair today, so you can't play drums or anything like that here.
Nomura:Mm-hmm.
Mountain Valley:When I heard that, I thought, "Oh, Berlin is amazing. I thought, "Wow, Berlin is amazing. I could have stopped him at any time, but when he finished, he called out to me. That one moment made me understand what everyone was saying about Berlin.
Nomura:In a mountain valley way (laughs).
Mountain Valley:This guy wanted to do something, and I knew he was going to see what it was and call me to the end.
Nomura:Maybe they didn't recognize me when they saw me, so they called me up (laughs)... If I had played something progressive for about 30 minutes, they would have called me up in the middle of the show (laughs).
Mountain Valley:Maybe. But anyway, I thought the atmosphere was nice.
Nomura:Yes, I know. But maybe they'll allow it in Japan. Let's do it in front of Harajuku Station (laughs).
Mountain Valley:(Laughs). I found out that in Japan, you are supposed to ask for permission, but basically, people don't ask for permission. It seems that as long as they are warned and obeyed, it is OK. And because of that experience in Berlin, I began to think that it would be best to do this performance as a guerrilla.
Since I am the photographer, I have always been the viewer, but I arrived at this form because I wanted to express in a single performance not only seeing, but also being seen. I think it is better if only people who are interested in the subject stop to take a picture. It is a snapshot in the larger sense of the word. That's what I was thinking about.
Nomura:No, it's not a little bit at all, you've been thinking about it a lot (laughs).
Mountain Valley:I would like to do it in Japan, too, although I don't know how far I can go in this day and age.
Nomura:I party a lot too, you know..,
(At this point, the designer, Sei Suzuki, suddenly appeared.)
Mountain Valley:Oh, this is Mr. Suzuki, the designer who did the design for "Doors" this time.
Designer Sei Suzuki.
