ArtGATA MagazineFebruary 05, 2022

The Sequel to a Dream: Ghosts of 1980s Japan by Johny Pitts

ArtGATA MagazineFebruary 05, 2022

Japan in the '80s was a bubble, and Johny Pitts grew up in it until the bubble burst into thin air. It was a fleeting, dreamy moment: a time so short, that he's been trying to painstakingly relive those memories through photography - and not in the usual way.

Akihabara Electric City on Konica SR-G 400 exp 1992.

From '87 to 1990, little Johny and his mom tagged along with his dad, who was a singer in the musical "Starlight Express." It was a hyper-glamorous time. He vividly recalls, "One of my earliest memories is of being allowed to stay up late at a VIP party for the cast, and the club owner, who was rumored to be a member of the yakuza, asked if I wanted anything. Being a child, I told him quite randomly that I’d like some Baskin Robbins ice cream. Half an hour later, someone returned with a tub of every single flavor. It must have been 2 AM!"

Small Johny with 80s Japanese idol Mayo Kawasaki

In 2013, Johny came back to Japan as an adult, only to be disappointed with what he described as terrible digital images of generic scenes. Frustrated, he unearthed his family's memorabilia and found two old cameras that his mom and dad bought from Akihabara. "I collected as much expired Konica film as I could - most of which expired during [those] years and made frequent return trips to Japan, making images that seemed to capture temporal glitches of my own memories," Johny shares.

In this visual quest, we asked Johny about his realizations to date. "This project has made me reconsider my conceptions of the notion of the "future," and develop a critique of late capitalism and consumer culture. The thing that haunts me a bit, though, is that the happiest memories of my life are of 1980s shopping malls - the type of places I now critique. We spent so much of our time wandering Japan buying new things and, though this is somewhat shameful to admit, consumerism DID make us happier. This story is much bigger than Japan - it’s about the overconfidence of Western liberal democracies and capitalism. There is still nowhere else on earth where I find peace like Japan. There is an incredible ambience in the cities, the suburbs, and the countryside that is hard to get from just looking at pictures - but I try to capture it anyway."

Cat in Kitakyushu backstreet, on old Konica

Johny's project has a long way to go, and it could lead to a very promising conclusion. "As somebody who grew up black in Britain, I suppose it’s strange for me to say this, but the book needs make clear that this is a "Western Gaze" and somehow capture a slight obliviousness, embodying the feeling of the luxury ‘coffee-table’ books we bought in the 1980s, yet also critique such things."

These images are deliberately displayed in random order, which makes the viewer eschew the eras they were shot, and just embrace the nostalgic aura each photo exudes.