Looking Back at the Phenomenocene: On the Road, Again, with Masao Miyoshi’s Photography

This essay is conceived as a supplement to Masao Miyoshi’s only book of photography. Miyoshi was an avid traveler and photographer all his life. He called his practice “anti-photography” and left a book titled This Is Not Here (2009). His photographic images are interesting in many ways, surprisingly fresh and often beyond words. But what is essential about photography is the fact that photography is never controllable. Photography, by its nature, is anti-ethics and anti-aesthetics. My thoughts are about the world of phenomena, appearances, and bodiless ghosts. These come in a thousand layers around the surface of the globe to allow you to inhabit within this shapeless realm, or a realm with too many shapes. Just like geological upheaval, this regime of images offers a new era that might be called the phenomenocene. This is our commonplace, our common destiny.