Remodeling Shiseido Gallery Edition

Shiseido Beauty Cake “Beloved by the Sun” Poster,1966 Photo: Noriaki Yokosuka, Model: Beverly Maeda ©Shiseido

K: These words transport me to a beach. This is quite a classic scene, no?  

A : In the Netherlands, there’s only a limited number of days where we could shoot this on location, though. We’re not famous for our sunny weather... What do you mean by a classic scene?

K: With words like blue sky, dazzling sunlight, and white swimsuit, the first thing that comes to my mind is a Mediterranean summer scene. Although I’m not a beach person really. I’ve never lived near to the sea, and I don’t have a strong connection to it. So I guess the first image I imagine is the generic Mediterranean beach, rather than something from my personal experience.

A:You mean those images that you see a lot in travel advertisements or TV commercials? Models jumping on a white sand beach or people drinking cocktails and so on?

K: Yes. Sometimes, although I don’t look at Instagram and other social media that often, I can look at a professionally taken image there and perceive it, unconsciously, as just a regular photo. And then I process that image as a standard image. In the way that I had the Mediterranean Sea in my head, even though I wasn’t familiar with it.

A: Yes. I think the same when I show my clients sample photos to represent ideas for future jobs. You know when you have meetings with them, right? I make several versions because I want to show a variety of different directions we could go in, and I notice that stock photos go down well with clients. Even though it’s clear that when you actually shoot a scene like that in real life, it will look different, right? The models are heavily photoshopped as well, in those sorts of images.

The photos that are eventually delivered have a strong documentary element, and the clients seem to be happy with that. So why do you think people think that stock photos are realistic?

K: I guess whatever you’re used to seeing becomes reality in your mind. Even if that’s not the reality.

A: Returning to the Summer, heat, light, dazzling sunlight...’, what shall we do about white clouds? If there aren’t any white clouds that day, should we Photoshop them in later?

K: I don’t know… I have a feeling that it’s not a good idea to Photoshop them in. But if there are no white clouds on the date of the shoot, I guess we have to consider it.   

A: Yes.

K: The image composition that came to my mind first was like the photo of Niels that we took for Ping Pong. The face and torso are in focus and the background is blurred. But instead of the pink/light blue gradated background of the sea, we’d have the blue sky and sun.  

A: Yes. The sun is strong and there’s sandy sweat on the model’s skin.

K: Who could be the model?

A: The description doesn’t mention anything about the model. It could be anyone. I’d prefer not to use a typical female model. A typical model in combination with summer, blue sky, and a white swimsuit could look clichéd.

K: What do you mean by a typical model?

A: You know what I mean.  Someone with very long thin legs and arms and a symmetrical face. Isn’t it strange that there is no description of the model? There must be one in this advert.

K: That’s true, there are no words written about the model. It’s a Shiseido summer advertisement, so it might be a sunscreen advertisement.

Behind the Eyelids

Coming across her photograph was a total coincidence. Paying a visit to my parents’ house for the first time in ages, I was clearing the desk in my old room, which now functioned more or less as a storage cupboard. As I opened up a drawer of the desk, I noticed something flutter down, and then there was her face staring up at me from the floor – the last face I’d expected to see there. A face I had last seen 30 years ago, which I scarcely brought to mind any more.

Her name was Cynthia, or Cindy for short. It was her voice that had first drawn me to her. It had to it a richness that echoed in the belly, a mysterious quality like travelling down to the bottom of the ocean. And then, after we got to know one another, there was the magnetism of her skin. Yes, her skin had a forceful energy to it, as if there were invisible suction pads all over her body. Embracing her, I experienced the exultation of transforming into a different kind of creature entirely.

Back then, it was the very height of Japan’s bubble era, and the media was kept on its toes by news of Japanese firms buying up the Rockefeller Center in New York, or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at auction. Cindy taught English at a language school in the day, and worked at a karaoke bar at night, where non-Japanese people from the area would congregate. At that time, Tokyo was a place where people from English-speaking nations could make a killing in a short time.

When the expiry date on Cindy’s visa was drawing near and the time for her to return home approaching, I thought about going with her to London. It was my final year of university, but I felt that getting a job straight after graduating was boring, and so I said to myself that the important thing was first to glimpse life outside of Japan. I realize now that my ability to entertain naïve impulses with such ease was testament to Japan’s state of prosperity.

I was sure that Cindy would welcome the idea of me accompanying her—so convinced was I, in fact, that it never once occurred to me to think otherwise. Yet when I confidently informed her of my plans, her behaviour immediately altered. Her attitude grew cooler, she began to tell me more frequently that she was busy, and one day, she vanished from me entirely.

At the time, I had no idea what was going on. Like a plastic suction pad that had suddenly come unstuck, I felt totally at a loss. I wondered if I’d done something to offend her, but I couldn’t think of one single thing it might have been. I was in such shock that it took me a good while to admit to myself that it had just been a fleeting relationship, of the kind that were ten-a-penny around me.  

The photograph was a promotional shot from her modelling agency. I could keep it, she’d said as she gave it to me, because she’d had a bunch of them printed. In it, her right eyebrow was raised. This was an expression that she often made. She would jut out her right shoulder at a slant and look at me over it, her chin slightly cocked. ‘You should go further, you mustn’t hold yourself back like that’—I remember her saying those words to me on several occasions. I had no awareness of holding myself back, as such—I just didn’t know how to let myself out. Yet when she would say such things to me with that bold directness of hers, which suggested she could at any moment yank up her anchor and set sail on the seas of life, I felt something deep within me rising up, as if in response. If I didn’t have any of the kinds of abilities that could be awakened by a provocation like that, unfaltering as the straightest arrow, her words did at least generate in me a kind of thrill.

Now, staring at the photograph, I felt something niggling at me. I tried turning it so it was straight, tilting it at an angle, and then, eventually, put my palm over her face, concealing the right side. After repeatedly lifting up my palm up, then replacing it, I realized what the issue was. The left and the right-hand sides of her face gave a quite different impression. There, concealed in the left half, was a different person to the one who appeared in the right.

It came to me that back when we were together, there had been a moment when I’d had a similar feeling. I’d gone to meet her after work, and after having a quick dinner together, we’d popped into a bar, where for some reason I sat to the left of her. At that time, whether we were on the train, alongside one another at a bar counter, sitting on the sofa watching videos, or lying together in bed, I was always positioned to her right. I was hard of hearing in my right ear, and so whomever I was with, I was accustomed to positioning myself so that my better ear was closer to the person I was speaking to. In the bar, sitting on the other side of her to usual, I noticed that her profile looked different. Was this really how she looked? Had she not swapped places with another woman I didn’t know? The burst of anxiety that surfaced in at that moment took me by surprise. Cindy wore a tired expression that day, and didn’t speak much, just took two or three sips of her scotch and then fell into silence. With our conversation at a standstill, we’d left the bar after one drink, but now, gazing down at the left side of her face in the photograph, the strange sensation I’d felt on that occasion returned to me.  

It struck me that, concealed in the left side of her face was the essence of a Cindy whose existence I’d been totally unaware of back then. There was no doubting that she was a friendly, sociable, cheerful person, but that didn’t mean she was a pushover. Her way of seeing things was as a mature as her rich voice, and when she’d made up her mind about something, she showed no mercy. The left half of her face took on an expression best described as a kind of rational cool-headedness. Back then, I had my head in the clouds, and the extent of my naivety was somewhat tedious. In fact, I was much like Japan itself in those days: sweet, but with no real bite, like the flimsy-thin wafers you’d find perched on top of the ice-cream served after dinner. It was really no wonder that she got bored of me. Now, the photograph from thirty years past whispered in my ear: I had been looking only at the right side of her face, and worshipping only that half. The photograph itself remained as it had always been—it was me who had changed.