Consumer Overkill, Japan-Style
Monday, January 24, 2005
So my buddy John Dick invited me to join a group of photographer friends of his and partake in their homework, consisting of a topic handed out on Friday and pictures posted to Flickr or somewhere else online by Sunday night. This week's theme was "obsessive consumerism" or "consumerism gone wild" or something like that, you get the idea, and I went digging through one area of my archives that I thought would have a lot of potential: my trip to Japan during summer 2003. Boy was I right! I only got halfway through the almost two thousand photos when I drew the line and said I have to go to bed, then culled 33 pics from the ones I'd put aside and posted them in this photoset (or just click through the image in this blog post).
A disclaimer: looking through the photoset today, I just realized that it might look like I had a negative outlook on the consumer-oriented culture there or had a bad time - nothing could be further from the truth! I had a wonderful time and the people were so friendly. The capitalism only looked funny because it was in a different context, allowing for things to be seen that are already here and under our noses back home but that you grow accustomed and blind to. This photoset is just but one lens through which you can view my trip and there's way too many pics from the trip to post all of them in order to give a fuller picture of the amazing time I had.
elsewhere on the web: Japan, photography, travel, consumerism, 3ones