Photographer Anton Kusters on ephemeral beauty and Japanese mobsters
A new photo series by Flemish photographer Anton Kusters currently on view in Hasselt asks pertinent questions about the small things in life and the nature of photography itself
Letting go
He didn’t mean the Japanese mobster in front of him but the larger crime family he was part of. “His answer was that it happened only once or twice a year,” he recounts.
Hasselt-based Kusters, 42, got to ask this question during the two years he shadowed a group of Yakuza, the Japanese organised crime syndicate, between 2009 and 2011.
The Yakuza photo series that resulted from this period was published in more than 100 international magazines and newspapers. The breakthrough came when a couple of his photos were published in The Sunday Times Magazine. “With L’Espresso and Stern, it’s one of the leading publications for photography,” Kusters says. “If you’re published in it, you know that everyone who is somebody in the world of photography will have seen it.”
Kusters’ brother Malik has lived in Japan for 15 years, and Kusters is his son’s godfather. “I was looking for an excuse to go to Japan more often. Since plane tickets to Tokyo are expensive, I thought I should at least have a photography project going,” he explains.
“One day around midnight, my brother and I were sitting in his favourite hangout, a cafe that has room for just four people, when one of the Yakuza leaders entered to have a short chat with the owner,” he says, confessing that he and his brother had no idea who the man was, until the owner filled them in after he had left.
A right to veto
This encounter gave the Kusters brothers the idea of photographing the Yakuza, even though the cafe owner said the plan was unachievable. But the brothers persevered, and the owner ultimately ended up introducing them to the Yakuza.
After 10 months of negotiations, Kusters got permission to describe his plan in a letter, detailing exactly what he wanted to do.
“I had to deliver my letter by hand to the boss of the clan, who of course already knew everything about the project. He read it and just said: ‘OK, it’s fine.’” He adds, with a smile: “That was all there was to it. It felt a bit like an anti-climax, but of course I was happy I was granted access.”
I didn’t want to become their propagandist, a Leni Riefenstal
Both parties agreed to set some basic rules. Kusters made it crystal clear that he didn’t want to be involved in any crime. “I also didn’t want to be interrupted from photographing. They had the right to veto every photo I wanted to use, though they never exerted this power,” he explains.
“On the other hand, I didn’t want to be coerced into using pictures I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to become their propagandist, a Leni Riefenstal,” he says, referring to the German director most famous for the propaganda films she made for the Nazi party.
Small things
Also currently on view at the CCHA in Hasselt is Mono no aware, his most recent series. The photos on view are very diverse and, despite what the title might suggest, they don’t have an exclusive focus on Japan. One of the photos was taken in Auschwitz (though it doesn’t look like it), while another shows Kusters’ godson playing hide-and-seek. Yet another depicts a couple of flowers and was taken in the photographer’s hometown of Hasselt.
“Mono no aware is Japanese for learning to enjoy small things and to accept that they are ephemeral. This show expresses the difficulties I have with letting go because I’m capturing these moments in pictures,” he explains. “The perfect mono no aware exhibition would consist of empty walls. But that seemed a bit too extreme.”
The titles of each of the photos on view follow the same format, and mention the city and the year when the photo was taken as well as the GPS co-ordinates.
Kusters trained as an analogue photographer and used to print his photos in a darkroom, but he switched to digital photography with little difficulty. “The question is: How can I make the best image I want to make? Nowadays, working digitally is often the answer. This might come as a surprise but I work on a digital image for much longer because there are more possibilities.”
From analogue to digital
Kusters alters some of his photos in unconventional ways. “Since memories are never perfect, I sometimes put objects like rice paper partially in front of a photo,” he explains. “It’s about the meaning you attribute to that moment in the past, the one that’s coloured by your memory.
“I’m using this exhibition to introduce a few elements that will be more prominent in the future. Another element is using a grid of frames to form one image. This is one way of introducing time into my work.”
It’s as if you’re photographing time
Kusters says he also wants to use a digital pinhole camera, which has a small pinhole aperture instead of a lens. “It has a nearly infinite depth of field, though the image is never as sharp as when using a lens,” he explains. “And because only a small amount of light can enter, it has a long exposure time. It’s as if you’re photographing time.”
Ideally, he explains, such pinhole cameras are mounted on a tripod. “Of course, I don’t do that, which leads to there being some movement in the image.”
Poetry in motion, you could say.
Until 24 September at CCHA
Photo: Anton Kusters’ Yakuza series
More visual arts this week
M Museum
M Museum, the Leuven venue that combines old with contemporary art, is reopening after six months of restructuring works with two new shows. Frenchman Aurélien Froment combines topics that seem absolutely unrelated related in his videos and photos. Meanwhile, US artist Cécile B Evans is featured with an installation that spreads across the museum, composed of 27 screens, two robots and a robot dog. From 11 June, M Museum, Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28, Leuven
Manufactories of Caring Space-Time
This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, the Metz-based Regional Contemporary Art Fund Lorraine and the Barcelona-based Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Together, they have created “a platform for reflection on the relational, the collective and collaborative as new tendencies in art”. As part of that effort, art collectives in each of the three cities have collaborated with local communities over the last two years. The Ghent show is the culmination of this work. A few other artists will also be presenting new work, including British street artist and photographer Slinkachu, best known for his Little People Project street installation. Until 27 August, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Fernand Scribedreef 1, Ghent
Off The Grid
Kris Burm is a famous man, though not so much in the world of visual arts. A Flemish game designer, he specialises in abstract board games, including both century-old games like chess and draughts as well as new ones like TZAAR and DVONN. Burm also creates the artwork for the board games, often opting for geometrically abstract patterns. Off the Grid, his new exhibition, tries to answer the question: What is an object’s intrinsic value once it’s stripped of its original functionality? From 15 June-1 July, Tique Art Space, Korte Vlierstraat 5, Antwerp
