The Flute Space & Extended Pause
The Flute Space: Deep Seeing in Japan
I had the good fortune to travel to Japan for two weeks from April 24 – May 7, 2025. During that time I participated in an exhibit at the Shimadei Gallery in Kyoto called “Sharing Visions: The Heartwork of Kyoto Journal” as part of the annual Kyotographie international photography festival. On April 26 I joined John Einarsen and several other writers, editors, and photographers from the Kyoto Journal community at an event to speak about how my work came into being. It was like coming home.
It had been eighteen years since my first and only visit to Japan. I took the opportunity to see many wonderful temples and sites, but it was really what I found walking the narrow streets that succored my attention. After a brief stop in Tokyo and several days in Kyoto, I was also able to visit Kaoru Kakizakai, my shakuhachi* sensei in the mountain town of Chichibu. I stayed in my teachers small rustic trailer and studied one piece – Sokkan – every day for a week. In-between practice sessions, when the light was useful I walked the streets with my camera and put the practice of deep seeing into action. This is what I found, what presented itself.
In the bookstore link you can preview "The Flute Space" book. The text included therein is comprised of edited excerpts from my journal while in Japan.
Extended Pause: Deep Seeing in Japan Vol. 2
I recently participated in an exhibition at The Terminal in Kyoto, Japan entitled Shitsurai XII / Pause, curated by John Einarsen and Remi Adachi. The exhibition was part of the KG+ Kyotographie festival. On April 25th, 2026, a week following the opening of the exhibition I gave a Deep Seeing workshop there. The following Saturday I attended a workshop by Miksang photographer and Kyoto Journal editor John Einarsen called Opening the Good Eye.
The exhibition Pause was very inspiring, and I wish to continue making art and doing contemplative photography in that spirit. This involves slowing down, being present, and learning how to notice the ordinary details that are so often overlooked. I can see how some people might regard this approach as escapism, but its really about finding inner peace, and in that being at peace, embody the equanimity required for activism free of self-righteous anger. During preparation for the show I came across this quote by the Tibetan Buddhist Lama Chakung Jigme Wangdrak:
The more we regularly pause
for loving, tenderness, joy, appreciation, and gratitude,
the more quickly we can turn our world around.
Deep Seeing is a workflow comprised of receiving, clarifying, and offering the gifts of a meditative and contemplative approach to photography. Deep seeing brings one into the continuum of spacious receptivity and in so doing has four distinct objectives: to offer a quiet picture; to focus on connections; to picture the vanishing and appearing; and to picture the unnoticed. I went to Japan with the intention to further this ongoing practice.
Extended Pause has a triple meaning for me. Firstly, to extend the sensibility of the Pause exhibition I was so fortunate to participate in. Secondly, taking a three week pause from all my projects in Los Angeles, and to walk as much as possible with my camera while in Japan in the spirit of deep seeing. Thirdly, to use photography to hold and extend precious moments of the ordinary sublime.
* a bamboo Zen flute