A short note on a little book that I have just acquired by the Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata. By “little” I mean little! Just 150mm by 210mm and containing only seven images, this is work that Shibata did in the 1980s and is, as the title suggests, a collection of black and white photos of Japanese gas stations. Taken at night (I am guessing, on a large format camera) they are starkly contrasted and have a sense of stillness and a gem-like quality that it seems to me you can really only get with film.
One of the things that attracted me to this work is the way, as with the likes of Eiji Ohashi and his vending machine pictures, such a mundane subject can be elevated to a higher aesthetic plane and how beauty can be found in a human intervention in the landscape that would not otherwise warrant a second glance (unless of course you need petrol for your car).
This sort of subject matter had of course already been explored in the 1960s by Ed Ruscha and his Twenty-Six Gas Stations and similar sites appear in the work of others (Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places come to mind in particular). I think though that this more pared down, concise work has more impact. Certainly it appeals to me more strongly.
It is one of those odd coincidences that this book comes along just as I have been thinking about possible subjects for Assignment 5. One possibility that I had already been considering would be to photograph sites around my village, including our own petrol station (along with, for example, certain shops, the cricket club, local school, train station, and so on), with an absence of people, possibly also at night. If nothing else it would give me an excuse to try film again, on a large format camera. My only hesitation at the moment is that with the current virus lock-down being out and about without a particularly compelling reason might attract unwanted attention. Let us wait and see what happens over the coming weeks before any decisions are made.
Shibata, T, (2020). Gas Stations. Manchester: Nazraeli Press
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