During my stay in Tokyo in July, I started to explore the concept and meaning of becoming camera, allowing my shoulder mounted camera to record my search for each unfolding image.

The experience has taken me on a new journey, as I start to wonder how the camera itself sees humanity, and how intelligent machines view the world.

The images below mainly unfolded from my direct artistic intervention, the final one from a collaboration between my shoulder and the camera, as we approached each other.

Photographer becomes camera, and camera becomes photographer.

Fig 1: Electric Town, Akihabara, Tokyo (Scouting image in the visible spectrum)

Fig. 1 is my scouting image for the blended spectra image below (Fig. 2) which questions the space between nature and the cityscape in which trees appear unnatural. As I took the image, my body mounted camera recorded the scene.

Fig. 2: Akihabara #1 (Electric Town)
Wednesday 17 July 2019, Akihabara, Tokyo © 2019 Gordon Sutherland

As I searched Tokyo’s back streets in quest of ‘the space between’, I remained transfixed by the fact that none of the buildings in the city actually touch each other, and allowed the my mounted camera record the quest of the photographer’s curiosity.

Fig. 3: Ueno #2, Friday 19 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo © 2019 Gordon Sutherland

Whilst towards the end of my stay, I started to collaborate with the body mounted camera and we registered images together (Fig. 4), as I became camera, and the camera became photographer during my photographic pilgrimage to find Naoya Hatekeyama’s River Series.

Fig. 4: Shibuya River, Monday 22 July 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo © 2019 Gordon Sutherland / GoPro Hero 7 Black

Fig. 5: Four Cameras & one Notebook, Monday 22 July 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo