(No) truth in advertising
Travel photographers in Japan can be wickedly deceitful. At best they merely crop their photos so that you cannot see the ugliness around, at worst complete photo manipulation is performed*. Below left is the picture from the Hama-rikyu Gardens brochure, on the right is the photo I took from the same angle.
Notice what’s missing from theirs?
* Yes, I know American fashion photographers have been doing this for ages.
Comments
It's quite likely that the brochure photo was taken before that building was erected. Just a few years ago, the area around basically a bunch of big empty holes waiting for more construction money. Now it's Shiodome and a bunch of apartment/office buildings.
by kristen | 04.14.03 @ 07:52 PM
Okay, so the buildings are new. However, I do believe this is a real phenomenon. Alex Kerr writes in Dogs and Demons about how a nuclear power plant was air brushed out of a tourist brochure so I am not making this up. I doubt they will ever update their brochure to reflex the real surroundings.
by Nadine | 04.15.03 @ 01:33 PM
the irony (for me at any rate) is that the new skyscrapers in some way heighten my appreciation for this garden/park, in the sense that I'm even more grateful for the open space, and the solitude and peace I can find there, even in their shadow. I suppose I take the sanguine view that without the progress modernization these buildings symbolize, this place might still be Tokugawa's summer villa...
by Kurt | 04.15.03 @ 02:05 PM
no doubt,
dogs an demons is all about this kinda crap. i read in there somewhere that they did the same thing with a nuclear energy facility that was in the backdrop of some beach in izu or something.
by shithouse rat | 04.16.03 @ 12:41 AM
Maybe it was just a cloudy day when they took the picture....
;-)
by David | 04.23.03 @ 01:22 PM