So, last Friday night Misa came over and stayed the night. It was a night filled with pasta and chocolate mousse and Enchanted and Rekorderlig. Saturday morning largely involved the devouring of criminally delicious and soft strawberry shortcake (Strawberries were on sale that week! Always ask your friendly supermarket staff members which ones are nice.), the recipe for which I will use again when the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei shoot rolls around.
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| I'm proud, okay. It's not David Bowie but it is delicious. |
For the unenlightened, SPEED OF LIFE is a limited exhibition by the Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita, featuring twelve different photographs throughout 40 years of collaboration between him and rock god David Bowie. Aside from prints of the exhibited photographs, they were selling the eponymous photobook.
I literally heard about this only the week before from my friend and fellow David Bowie fangirl Ebony (HOW DO YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT WHEN FAMOUS PEOPLE COME TO MELBOURNE. OH MY GOD), and we decided to meet at the gallery itself. She was a little late, so I walked in first, and saw a little old man, clearly of Asian descent.
"Please don't let it be Sukita, I'll feel all awkward and things," I thought, as I perused the sturdy photobook at the entrance, a comprehensive and emotive essay of Bowie's professional (and sometimes not-as-professional) life, smiling at all the pictures of him as a lithe young thing, with his prominent and beautiful bone structure. Ziggy era Bowie is my favourite kind of Bowie, though I think all his styles hold merit in their own ways.
"If you want to ask him any questions, tell me, and I'll translate for you," said a young girl, also of Asian descent.
It was him. Merde. I felt my hands sweat in the presence of the man who took all the photographs of this beautiful man, and was momentarily thankful that the gallery had provided gloves to people wishing to peruse their copy of Speed of Life. "God, woman, don't sweat on the page. David Bowie and Sukita both signed this book. Their hands have touched it. The hands of two amazing men. Don't go sweating all over something their hands have touched, dammit," I thought.
I wonder after David Bowie. I wonder about those hands. I wonder how they feel. But that is a question for Iman and Lexi to answer.
Ebony appeared soon after, and when she realised it was Sukita (almost immediately) she had a bit of a fangirl moment. We perused the book together, as Sukita told us things about the photographs. "The circle on his forehead represents the moon," he said.
"I've been looking at this costume for a long time, and I still don't know what it's made of," I mused to Ebony when we got to the page with this picture.
What he did know, however, was that this costume was not initially made for David Bowie. It was made by Kansai Yamamoto for a female model, but Bowie happened to fit into it, so they did a shoot with this costume.
We took a look around at the exhibition itself, and it took a lot of strength for me not to reach out and gently stroke David Bowie's cheekbones in all the photos. Immature, I know, but it's David Bowie. He's fabulously handsome enough for me to want to do something like that in public, but not fabulously handsome enough for me to do that in front of his photographer.
We returned and continued looking at the book (the most expensive photobook I have ever set eyes on, but also the most magnificent), and heard someone ask after Bowie. He is fine now, Sukita said, but he's not performed for a long time because of his heart. He knows everyone's waiting for him to come back, though. Sukita also said he was looking forward to photographing Bowie next year.
During a slow period in the time we were there, Sukita brought out photographs from his travels. "These are from his exhibition in Japan," his interpreter explained, "Not just David Bowie. There are other stars there too, like Elvis Costello."
He then produced three copies of a Japanese circular, took out a marker, and signed them before giving one each to both of us, and the interpreter. We gasped in delight, and I mused inside about how it would be a terrible time for a grand piano to descend from the ceiling upon my head.
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| Left: Sukita awesomeness Right: Sukita awesomeness |
The following is an accurate description of how I feel about receiving this:
sjdtgdayvhsahtdkjdhfklasjgvdsbjkghsvuasobn
aeiguhasljfasliffdsdfkfdhjkahjkfhsvksjklcsejae
hgsjvkcfdskvdjvklineoqhefncascomdqowfnfo
vinaioevneuonaunvegfeouvgeaovo!!!!!!!!1
After nearly an hour in the exhibition space (really, who does that?) we decided to go get lunch. But just before we left, we got a picture with him.
"Which picture would you like to stand next to?" we were asked.
We let him choose.
After that, Ebony and I shook his hand, thanking him for his work and for having us for so long. His hands were old, certainly, but by no means were they frail, as his firm grip showed. It was a beautiful day out, and we left the exhibition to perfect springtime sun.
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| From left: really handsome man, me, really quite paradise, really awesome photographer, really crazy fabulous girl, really talented musician. |
If you have time to spare and want to see pictures of forty years of ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (old joke, I know), SPEED OF LIFE closes on Saturday, the 8th of September. It's open today from 10am to 5.30pm, and on Saturday from 10am to 4pm.
310 Toorak Rd,
South Yarra 3141, Victoria
