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The Guardian
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Monks, politicians, drag queens – all life is here': a trip to Japan's Kyotographie festival
Towering above commuters and passersby at Kyoto station is a monumental mural featuring more than 500 portraits of local residents. This striking installation by acclaimed French photographer JR heralds the opening of Kyotographie 2025, the city's celebrated month-long international photography festival. The theme for this year's event is 'humanity'. Last autumn, JR and his team transformed Kyoto into a living studio, setting up mobile portrait stations across the city to capture the rich diversity of Kyōto-jin society. Monks, artisans, politicians, schoolchildren and drag queens – all life is here. Shooting the Chronicles of Kyoto – each person is photographed against a greenscreen backdrop The photographer and street artist's technique is to take each portrait on a greenscreen backdrop, with controlled lighting for continuity, so that they can be easily cut out and placed on a constructed landscape. This is based on spaces and buildings photographed from around the city that are stitched together to create a grand tableau of unexpected interactions. Every portrait is taken with the same lighting applied for continuity Each individual is in charge of how they're portrayed. It's entirely up to them what they choose to wear and how they pose – there is no direction or choreography from the artist. The only brief for JR is to capture the essence and character of the population and all its vivid qualities. The people are chosen to present a comprehensive cross-section of society Many also contribute a brief audio reflection – sharing personal stories or everyday thoughts – creating a collective portrait of the present moment. The Chronicles of Kyoto, seen here in its entirety Inside the Shimbun Building, a former printing press turned gallery, visitors are led through JR's creative process via a detailed exhibition. Examples of his large-scale public installations from around the world offer insight into his unique artistic vision. JR talks through the exhibition detailing his methods at the Shimbun Building, a former printing plant in Kyoto. Examples of his Chronicles series from other parts of the world are on display As always, Kyotographie features a tri-continental dialogue between Japan, France and Africa, reflecting the cultural heritage of festival co-directors Yusuke Nakanishi and Lucille Reyboz, who spent her childhood years in Mali. Each year an African photographer is invited to spend a residency in the city to create a unique body of work and this year's chosen artist is Laetitia Ky from Ivory Coast. Ky is known for self-portraits featuring elaborate sculptures she makes using her hair. The pictures are quirky and witty but they make a serious point about her relationship with her afro hair and the shadow of colonial legacy affecting her heritage. Growing up in Abidjan, her friends and family went to exhaustive lengths to live up to an ideal of western beauty involving toxic hair-relaxing chemicals. After undergoing one disastrous chemical treatment herself, Ky discovered a community of women online who were embracing their natural hair and she began to question why she felt the need to alter her true self. Her work is an expression of acceptance and self love that she shares on social media with online communities all over the world and it makes a social and political statement about the complexities of female identity. Tote Tresses was made during Laetitia's residency in Kyoto; Fishing in Kamo River is another image in the residency series During her time in Kyoto, Ky has made an affectionate commentary on her Japanese experience, twisting extensions held with wire into her hair to create an act of self-expression that shares and endorses cultural pride. Artists Lee Shulman and Omar Victor Diop are featured together in this image from the series Being There African experience is also central to the series Being There created by British artist Lee Shulman in collaboration with Omar Victor Diop from Senegal. This nostalgic journey back in time takes examples of the type of photography that may appear in family albums across North America from the 50s and 60s, a time of segregation and racial inequality, and questions what is absent. Being There looks to reimagine a world without segregation The source images for the project are found or 'orphaned' photographs that aren't attributed to anyone in particular. The pair then add Omar, a black African, into the scene, introducing him naturally in every frame so as not to disrupt the cohesion of the family album. It's a meticulous process that blends the light and atmosphere and even the surface texture of the original photograph. Displayed in a traditional Japanese home styled as a mid-century domestic setting, the series offers a moving meditation on representation, memory and belonging. The series challenges social and racial stereotypes Growing up in Senegal, Omar didn't experience segregation himself but he feels empathy for those who did. The work he has made over the last 12 years has been about travelling through time to explore the place of African people in the world. The work is displayed in a mid-century middle-class American setting Japanese perspectives are central too. This year marks the return of pioneering Okinawan photographer and activist Mao Ishikawa, now in her 70s. Her 1970s series Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa documents the lives of women – including herself – working in bars frequented by African American GIs stationed on the island. These candid, intimate images confront lingering stigmas and the complex sociopolitical legacy of the US military presence in postwar Okinawa. A photograph from the series Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa Photographs from the Red Flower series by Mao Ishikawa, exhibited at Kyotographie 2025 Another Japanese highlight is Keijiro Kai, a sports photographer fascinated by the primal intensity of physical contests. From the chaotic Shrovetide football match in Ashbourne, England, to Japan's Hadaka Matsuri – where naked men clash in a frenzied struggle for fortune – Kai captures the raw, boundary-blurring energy that unites people in shared physical experience. His work is a visceral exploration of masculinity, ritual and collective identity. Shrove Tuesday, Keijiro Kai's exhibition at Kyotographie 2025 Clothed in Sunny Finery, Okayama, 2018, by Keijiro Kai Rounding out the festival is the first ever Japanese retrospective of legendary Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. Spanning six decades, the exhibition traces her poetic journey across deserts, mountains and cultures – from the indigenous Seri people in the Sonoran desert to Zapotec women in Oaxaca, and beyond. Inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment', Graciela's memorable images – such as the majestic Angel Woman or the iguana-crowned Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas – merge documentary precision with spiritual wonder. Angel Woman, shot in the Sonoran desert, Mexico, in 1979 Now in her 80s, Graciela is still taking pictures today. Included in the curation is a reportage series commissioned by Dior for Vogue Mexico in 2023. The work is a perfect example of the creative intelligence and dynamic character that continue to define her. The Kyotographie international festival runs until 11 May 2025. Fiona Shields travelled to Kyotographie at the invitation of the festival organisers.
Daily Mail
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE George Clooney's baseball career, Bob Dylan's greed and sports' darkest day: Inside my dinner with iconic TV star Jim Lampley
George Clooney tried out for his hometown Cincinnati Reds, Mike Tyson 's lingering childhood trauma prompted his return to the ring at 58, and as for Bob Dylan, well, his famed abhorrence of money is really more of a guideline than a strict rule. Such are the random, insightful nuggets I learned while dining with Jim Lampley, the broadcasting legend, raconteur and author of the new memoir, It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television. Now 76, with a full head of graying hair and his unmistakable smile intact, Lampley has been promoting the fascinating work across the US. But rather than a formal interview with the Daily Mail, Lampley's publicist and fellow Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Fred Sternberg arranged an intimate dinner at a busy Manhattan steakhouse that became the stage for a sequence of tales, all equally engaging and eclectic. Lampley once filmed a cameo for the 2001 Ocean's Eleven remake, where he said Clooney confessed to his humiliating Reds tryout. '[Clooney] toppled backwards trying to escape a curveball that dropped in for a strike on the outside part of the plate,' he recalled. A few years later, Lampley started his own production company, bought the rights to Dylan's 2004 book, Chronicles, and took several meetings with the folk singer in hopes of producing an adaption for HBO. 'The only question I can ever remember Bob asking about the project, two or three times, was, "How much money am I going to make?"' George Clooney tried, and failed, to get a contract offer from his hometown Cincinnati Reds, while Bob Dylan was singularly focused on how much money he could earn with Jim Lampley Ultimately the project didn't go anywhere. 'I asked HBO to gently and lovingly kick me in the teeth,' Lampley said. 'Which they did.' And therein lies the charm of his stories, which are humorous and self-deprecating, even as he drops one headline name after another. Of course, Lampley's proximity to some of the most interesting people and events of the last 50 years is no surprise. Few play-by-play announcers can approach his distinguished resume or breadth of experience across the greatest sporting events of the 20th and early 21st centuries. As a teenager in Miami, his mother - and inspiration for his book - Peggy Lampley, drove him to watch an underdog Cassius Clay stun heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964. A decade later, Lampley began his career as a college football sideline reporter when he won a nationwide ABC talent search. Since then, he's covered everything from the World Series to the Super Bowl and Wimbledon to the Indianapolis 500 - not to mention his 30-year reign as HBO's undisputed voice of boxing. And it was in the latter role that Lampley befriended a fading Tyson, who at 58 years old remains one of the most complicated figures in sports after his controversial decision to fight Jake Paul for a reported $20 million. 'For Mike, any legitimate, heartfelt deprivation puts him back in the tenement apartment in Brooklyn waiting for his mother to come home from the corner bar,' Lampley said, pointing to Tyson's traumatic childhood in Brownsville. 'So the notion that somebody cooks up a scheme by which Mike is going to make another eight-figure sum of money, there's no way he's going to say no.' Though, it hasn't been all checkered flags and Champagne rooms for Lampley, who was forced into far less glamorous assignments with ABC's Wide World of Sports. He's also been tasked with covering wrist wrestling championships, lumberjack events and, worst of all, he says, a cheerleading competition in Daytona Beach. There have also been tragedies along the way. Lampley was at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, where eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September killed 11 Israeli Olympians. At the time, millions of Americans were riveted by Jim McKay's 14-hour broadcast on ABC Sports, culminating with his solemn words: 'Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.' The broadcast remains an essential moment in sports history due, in part, to ABC producer Roone Arledge, whose off-screen maneuvering was witnessed, studied and committed to memory by then 26-year-old Lampley. '[Chris] Schenkel was the primetime host,' Lampley said in his inescapable anchor-toned delivery. 'Schenkel had been the primetime host in Mexico City [in 1968]. He was still the primetime host in Munich.' 'When they learn what's going on in the Olympic Village, Arledge calls in a subordinate named Jeff Mason, coordinating Olympics producer,' Lampley continued. 'He says, "Jeff, I have a complicated assignment for you. I need you to go out and undertake a diligent search for Chris… and I need you not to find him. And then I need you to find out where McKay is and put him in the chair."' And with that, the affable Schenkel - ABC's top anchor - was replaced with McKay's dignified gravitas. 'That succession took place at that moment because Roone knew that Chris's personality was utterly and completely wrong for that and that McKay was fundamentally a newsman,' Lampley said. '"Put McKay in the chair." That's Arledge's genius.' Even when he wasn't working, Lampley still had a knack for gaining entry to the biggest sporting events, due in no small part to his celebrity status. As his wife, Debra, said, Lampley is 'the right level of famous' - which is to say he receives some perks without any major drawbacks. Take Oct. 18, 1977, when he witnessed Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson's historic three-homer performance in Game 6 of the World Series. As Lampley explains in 'It Happened!', those tickets were provided by none other than Mr. October himself. But for all of his good fortune, Lampley considers himself most lucky to have learned under Arledge, the canonized creator of Monday Night Football, not to mention McKay and fellow ABC Sports legend Howard Cosell, both of whom regarded the younger announcer as a threat. 'It was unique for me to work in that environment, with all of those people already with their personas, already who they were, and managing to perform well enough to survive that culture and to not be demolished,' Lampley said. 'This is despite the fact that Cosell hated me and McKay hated me.' Lampley immediately picked up on our surprise, not at the famously competitive Cosell disliking a younger announcer, but at the venerable McKay feeling that way as well. 'You would have thought that McKay would be big enough,' Lampley said. 'You know, elevated enough... No way.' He also worked at ABC and NBC with O.J. Simpson, whom he befriended until 1994, when Lampley became convinced the Buffalo Bills legend was guilty of murdering ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Larry Holmes (left) lands a jab against challenger and former champ Muhammad Ali in 1980 But for as much time as Lampley has spent ringside, courtside and in the booth, he's had nearly as much firsthand experience with the biggest names in music, film, business and politics. Lampley was golfing buddies with Hollywood hero Jack Nicholson, befriended Simpson's co-creator James L. Brooks and even spent some time with then New York real estate developer Donald Trump, although he can't say they were ever real acquaintances. And as is so often the case in these elite circles, Lampley's A-list friends would often introduce him to an even higher echelon of socialites, like the time Arledge invited him and Mick Jagger to watch Muhammad Ali's 1980 loss to Larry Holmes on closed-circuit television. 'Closing stage of his career, Ali is fighting the necessary passion play against Larry Holmes,' Lampley said ahead of dessert. 'And Holmes, [Ali's] former sparring partner, is now going to wipe the canvas with him and become the heavyweight champion, and the fight is not mercifully brief.' The viewing took place on the 16th floor at ABC, where guests slowly began imploring referee Richard Green to stop the fight all the way in Las Vegas. Ali's corner would throw in the towel after 10 rounds, but not before Jagger offered a perfect synopsis of what the crowd of 30-somethings were witnessing. 'I feel this little poke at the bottom of my rib cage,' Lampley said. 'I look down and it's Mick. And Mick says, "Do you know what we're watching, Lamps?" 'I said, "No, Mick, what are we watching?" '"It's the end of our youth,"' Lampley said, quoting Jagger. 'That's the greatest line of commentary: "It's the end of our youth." Because so many from the Baby Boomer generation had dated themselves by [Ali].' Yes, Lampley is, himself, a Baby Boomer. But like his recently deceased friend George Foreman, whose 1994 upset of Michael Moorer is referenced by the title of It Happened!, Lampley has remained relevant for decades. Announcers don't have expiration dates, and as long as they know how to tell the right story in the most interesting way possible, there will always be an audience willing to listen. And for that, Lampley remains eternally grateful. As he wrote about his memoir in the book's prologue, 'It's the story of how my life constantly and repeatedly rescued itself from self-destruction and left me with identities and encounters that are in some ways unique for an American sportscaster.'
