Modern people want to take pictures, take out their mobile phones to shoot the scene and quickly take photos. However, a few decades ago, taking pictures was not as convenient as it is now, and it can even be said to be a more formal thing, when photographers seemed to be a very sacred profession.
Taking pictures is to record the present moment, but also to record life.
Masaharu Ueda, a National Treasure photographer in Japan, once had this feeling: "For me, it is actually a kind of thing that records 'feelings' through a camera. For the photographers, it is proof that they live in the moment. ”
From 1974 to 1985, he serialized the "Little Biography" series of works in the Japanese magazine Camera Daily, which recorded the daily life of many people. The book "Masaharu Ueda's Small Biography" presents the "Small Biography" series of works together with related texts, which is a proof that the photographer lives in the present, and it is also a record of Ueda Masaharu's own past.
Nowadays, when we appreciate Masaharu Ueda's photographs, we may not feel amazing, whether the characters in the photos are dressed relatively plainly, their expressions are natural, and there is no excessive decoration, and the state they present is the current life.
Under Ueda's camera, children stand in a row on the beach, Takeyoshi Yoshida's father gazes quietly somewhere in the feed warehouse, members of the women's association rest together after working together, Mr. Okamoto Morio works naked in the summer, girls traveling in costume at the coming-of-age ceremony, girls playing on the playground after school... All of this is actually the best freeze frame of the current state of life.
Compared with today's art photos, this is more reflective of life itself. Reading this book now, it seems that I have been pulled back to decades ago, when I was also "taking pictures of the Eight Classics".
In his book Little Biography, Masaharu Ueda says that he followed the path of an amateur, but he held on to this hobby for fifty years. Although he is an amateur photographer of his own, he also emphasizes that a person's attitude towards photography is the basis for distinguishing between professional and professional, and according to my feelings about reading this book, I think he is professional.
He is professional because the photos he takes make people feel professional. In some photos, behind the person being photographed is the scene, from the perspective of the whole photo, Masaharu Ueda is very professional about the size of the characters in the whole photo and the choice of scenery, he has his thoughts, the photos are not only photos, there is content and soul.
It's like an essay, there always has to be a theme, and so are photographs, even if they are photographs of scenes. For example, in the photo of "Pug Dog", there is a pug and a little boy. According to the thinking of ordinary people, it may be necessary to present the whole dog and man, but in the photo taken by Masaharu Ueda, the little boy is only exposed, without a head.
I think he deliberately chose it that way, because the subject he wanted to express was pugs, and as for the little boy, it wasn't that important. You may say, that it is possible to shoot only one dog, why should there be a little boy? This may be what makes this photograph unique. Because of the existence of the little boy's figure, the whole photo has a touch of humanity, and it has a more far-reaching meaning.
Another example is "The Shadow of the Cactus", we have no way of knowing where the cactus is, we can only see its shadow, reflected on the curtain, lonely, straight, this is like a very lonely time, do not want to be seen, only want to stay quietly somewhere, alone licking the wounds of the heart.
In the modern era, when you can take pictures at any time and PS, you can enjoy the people and things recorded in Masaharu Ueda's "Little Biography", and you have a feeling of traveling through time and space. This may be the focus on the imprint of that era, its simplicity, its innocence, forever in the memory of time.