Ego Wrappin, Night Food.
The song of that night.
Good Friday evening. The city was mostly dead on the surface... few people walking dogs in the park, nobody at Fitzroy enjoying the colors, all the streets leading downtown were quiet and lonely. Boring may seem but a walk, anyhow, is always a good way to see a place better, particularly when there's no noise, no people.
So off i went on a walk, through lanes and main streets. I was delighted with the weather and specially the view. Melbourne is a place where street art is legal, there are lanes totally dedicated to it and graffiti writers can show up there to do their thing anytime. The outcome is impressive: a whole alley boasts thousand colors and designs, some with dazing messages to the passers-by, others simply amazing by their size or complexity.
However, this post is not about that. This post talks pretty much about a person who enjoys taking urban shots on his endless trip around and through whom I learned more about street art in Australia. It called my attention to see Tomo sitting on the floor sorrounded by his prints of great pictures on such a day. Some of the shots I saw there were taken creatively with plastic tubes on the lens that reflect the colors in unexpected ways, others making great use of light and most of them, without showing any icons of the cities, taking spontaneous daily life moments of places as busy as Tokyo and Sydney. I decided to sit next to him and talk for some good 3 hours. We shared music, we talked about Japan, Mexico and our trips, we eventually showed each other our lomography fisheye cameras and I took a couple of pics of him. After a while, Rie showed up in the scene too. Rie, his lovely girlfriend was great to talk to too even if it was for few minutes only. Before carrying on with my walk around, I decided to buy some pictures from Tomo. To my surprise, all he asked for was any spare coin from people's pockets. I chose my 5 favorite pics -a very difficult task- and gave him 25 dollars. Cheap or expensive, that didn't really matter. What Tomo taught me was much more than just about good Japanese music, awesome photography and interesting traveler's anecdotes; he taugh me that an artist can make his way through with pure passion and most of all NO FEAR!
Tomo with a bit of Melbourne's background
I won't publish any of Tomo's pictures in this post in order to avoid any plagiarism of his work.Melbourne, Australia
April 2010.
