Bus Home, Yoshinogawa
A very interesting photographic project by John Tran, and I learnt a new word - Sabi:
"At the heart of this poem is the aesthetic ideal of sabi that infuses so much of Japanese verse. Closely related to the concept of yugen - the aesthetic of profound spiritual mystery - sabi was propounded by Fujiwara Shunzei (1114 - 1204) in the late Heian period and could be loosely described as a sense of beauty arising from the contemplation of desolation, solitude and stillness."
The poem in question is the following Basho haiku:
Lying over angry seas
and the distant Sado Island -
the arch of the Milky Way
John Tran has lots of great photographs elsewhere on his website, organised by conceptual theme, and the whole thing strikes me as being very much worth repeat viewing.
I used to walk past this view every day, which makes me warm to him even more :)
View of Electric Town From Ochanomizu (2004)
