Finished reading: Savor by Fatima Ali 📚 and Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H 📚

Two queer Pakistani memoirs in a row:

• Fatima Ali, a former Top Chef contestant who by had a promising career in food media before suddenly receiving a diagnosis for sarcoma. Co-written by Tarajia Morrell
• Lamya H, a religious, Pakistani butch who grew up in Saudi Arabia, navigating faith and love in New York City

Both books are very different. I liked the unapologetic, authentic insights into their lives. Both present aspects of faith and family with intimacy and tenderness.

Fatima Ali’s book in particular struck a cord with me: my wife and I have been deep into memoirs and articles that discuss death and grief (Sabrena is currently learning about grief in her college psychology program). What started as a an attempt to document her legacy and bucket list items before she passed turned into one where her condition worsened so much she couldn’t travel. Instead, we got a beautiful book about her life told from her and her mother’s perspective, that very much left you with a strong sense of who she was. She seemed to have been the sort of person I would have loved as a friend. I wish I followed her career more closely.

Lamya H’s book gives us a sense into how confusing and difficult it must have been to be a queer person in Saudi Arabia, especially so as a brown person there in their very classist society. She talks about friendships (or attempts at friendships) with Arab girls, growing up in a girls' school environment there and winning a scholarship to study in the US. Personally, I am usually skeptical / afraid of any ex-Muslim narratives that play to American bigotry; I was relieved to find that Lamya H deftly paints a portrait of who she is as a person and what she believes in, without needing to play off either side. Instead, she manages to weave her story about her life, country of birth, the place she grew up, where she lives now, her sexuality, her faith and family into an impressive, cohesive whole. I am thankful she published such an important book.

Finished reading: Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs by Takeshi Nakamoto 📚

Daido Moriyama is one of the photographers I admire the most. His work (black and white street photography) is an influence on the kind of work I am trying to do in my photography; and his shooting style most resonates with me. He is known to mostly shoot with compact cameras, especially the Ricoh GR series.

This photography book is unique in that it isn’t just a book of his published photos centered around a theme. Sometimes, I get quite bored of those types of books: Western photographers who go to India, for example, and shoot hundred page photo books that feel vaguely exploitative and white-gazey, are an example of the types of photography I very much dislike.

Since I know Asia, and Asian cities quite well, I have a finely tuned nose for that sort of thing. I don’t find Asia exotic because, well, I am from there. So I tend to look to the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi photographers I admire whose body of work situates them within places they work in, where, they have frankly far more interesting things to say. (Dayanita Singh’s photography, for example, does not need to rely on that pop and shock of India’s color or festivals or ‘weirdness’ to make a point: her long term work embedded in local communities tell me so much more about the place than, “India is so strange and exotic!”)

So it is with Daido Moriyama. There’s no mistaking a Daido Moriyama photograph for someone else’s. No matter where he’s shooting, whether it’s Japan or Argentina. If there is a photographer whose ‘personal vision and style’ I want to learn most, it is his.

This book is written by his collaborator, a Japanese author and photographer who shadowed Moriyama on several trips, all the while asking: what advice do you have? What are you thinking? What message are you trying to make?

And all Moriyama says is:

• Just go out and shoot
• Shoot as much as you can (he believes in having quantity as a way to get quality photos)
• He walks up and down a street both ways and he takes about a roll of film per direction
• He thinks there is value in observing the mundane
• Some basic tips, like ‘if you shoot a body of water against the light, the contrast is quite nice especially in black and white’ but he refuses to believe there are any specific tips that are applicable to all
• He cares about doing the work more than talking about the technique or gear

The book also says that he teaches sometimes, and many of his students are trying to break into fashion or avant garde photography. For those students, he advises that the work is the same as that of someone trying to do photojournalism or documentary photography. Go out and shoot mundane things. Find a building, take a hundred photos of it. Learning to see beauty in the mundane is the most important skill one can develop.

Each part of the book is based in a certain location. So when he goes to Ginza, for example, there is a photo of the contact sheet that he shot. It was actually nice to see that a master has a ton of duds, too. Not that he ever pretended otherwise: but it was still assuring to know that Daido Moriyama isn’t getting 36 book or exhibition worthy photos out of every roll of 36.

Lastly, he advises that the most important thing to do when you take a photograph is that you must have a desire to make that photograph. Not necessarily to tell a story or make a point (in fact, he says that arriving somewhere and having a pre-conceived idea of the location or community’s politics or social message is not a good way to take photos, that he prefers to just witness). But that you must feel that you have to take that photo.

Moriyama also has a lot of things to say about film vs digital. He’s gone digital now, and there’s no going back! Having used both the Ricoh GR film and digital cameras, and also being agnostic to the film vs digital debates (currently, I am shooting more film to learn the darkroom arts specifically, but if I were to go back to working again as a photographer, it would probably make more sense to be digital-first, especially given film costs these days), I think he’s right. The Ricoh GR digital cameras are extremely capable, and they are my favorite film cameras. I do miss the contrasty T-Max grain and quality of his earlier work, but artists are allowed to evolve their vision and tools, and experiment. I appreciate this non-dogmatic quality about Moriyama.

I would highly recommend this book even if you don’t love this type of street photography. It’s a good way to get an insight into how a great photographer works and thinks, beyond gear talk and such. The world has too much of the latter; but books like these are what I appreciate much, much more.

Finished reading: All Quiet in Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee 📚

Sarnath Banerjee’s graphic novel “All Quiet in Vikaspuri” is an alt universe / dystopian future story centered on the posh neighborhood of Vikaspuri in South Delhi. An ensemble of colorful characters illuminate this otherwise monochrome book, whose pencil art is sparse, but powerful.

Girish, a psychic plumber tasked with finding the magical river Saraswati. A former army colonel. A former employee of the Delhi Water Board.

For anyone who is vaguely interested in how Asia’s mega-cities balance urban planning, growth and ecology (hint: mostly poorly), this is a poignant way to understand some of the issues at stake. Even though the characters and issues are presented as dystopian fantasy, they are very real.

Nowhere more real than Banerjee’s quips about Gurgaon, the satellite city just outside New Delhi that was built by private enterprise, and feels like it.

In the graphic novel, he says, “80 per cent of Indian cities will become like Gurgaon”. “People think their building provides their water and power.”

Finished reading: Moyasimon by Masayuki Ishikawa 📚

I spent the latter half of 2022 reading widely on all things microbiome and mycology. I am fascinated by these two related topics, particularly by how little we seem to know about it. I certainly wish I had been exposed to these topics more extensively in school.

From a book about mushrooms, I was introduced to a manga about a boy who can see germs and bacteria. It’s certainly a topic I never imagined I would read about in this format. It’s very educational but also fun.

It’s set in an agriculture university, and through a variety of characters tells you about the different types of bacteria in sake-brewing, bacteria that exists around us, as well as different fermentation practices around the world. It’s fun, and quite action-packed for manga that’s about something so.. unseen. Highly recommended, and I’m digging into volume 2 as we speak.

Finished reading: How Music Works by David Byrne 📚

David Byrne seems to like the same things I do, having written a book about bicycles, and about music. Or, I like David Byrne and the music he makes and loved seeing his thoughts on music in this book.

Part memoir (about his experience in the Talking Heads), part history and science of music, this book will be something I keep coming back to. A very helpful chapter describes the current state of the music industry and provides a cold hard glimpse into the numbers behind how professional musicians make music and money.