Gaston is the reason that I ‘m starting my next long term project: Heavens.

Heavens will become a personal journey, me trying to make sense of something unimaginable. Something unspeakable. Something that took place in Europe 60 years ago, before I was born.

I feel the need to personally understand and place the huge and unimaginable injustice done to so many millions during the years of the Holocaust. A darkest page in human history, yet a page never to be forgotten.

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It all started with my grandfather during WWII, when he was a geography student at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

One night, when Gaston was home asleep, Nazi soldiers raided the house. In the middle of the night they banged the door and forced their way in. His mother woke up from the noise and pushed him out of bed and out the bedroom window onto the flat roof. The soldiers were on a mission to round up and deport all university students who were member of a certain fraternity, with members active in the resistance.

It didn’t take long before the soldiers entered Gaston’s bedroom. Though it appeared as if the bed was unslept in, one of the soldiers felt the warm mattress and deducted that he must be hiding somewhere in the immediate surroundings. Outside in the meantime, Gaston had been unable to find a hiding place on the flat roof, the only thing in the nearby being a glass dome shaped window in the roof, behind which he desperately tried to tuck himself away as much as he could. One of the young German soldiers, about the same age as him, opened the bedroom window and climbed out onto the roof.

It was impossible not to spot my grandfather.

And indeed he did. My grandfather peering through the glass, acutely aware that he could as well just be standing up and in plain sight, and the German soldier looking straight back at him. Then It happens. They lock eyes for an instant. Both men in their late teens. Both men black hair. Both men look at each other for an eternity, in which they seem to realize something more, something bigger than that wretched war.

The soldier steps back inside saying “Nein, er ist hier nicht.”… the cue for my grandfather to make a run for it. Over different roofs, several houses down the road where he jumps off into a courtyard.

Unfortunately Gaston jumps straight into a dog pen, waking up the dog who starts to bark loudly. It’s about 2am now. Gaston frantically tries to keep the dog quiet, eventually succeeds, and stays in the pen literally for several hours, waiting. Hours later, he climbs out of the pen. As he walks back to his house, at the end of the street around the corner, he suddenly gets pulled into a house by one of his neighbors… a woman suspected to be collaborating with Nazi Germany. She pulls him into her house, whispering “Antoine! Hide here, wait, they’re still staking out your house waiting for you to return…”.

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My grandfather’s life got saved twice that night. And by two of the most unlikely people to do so.

A tiny story of hope in what were the darkest of days for millions.

(From that moment onwards, everywhere my grandfather went, he was always shown a secret escape route or hiding place… everyone in town and at the university knew they were after him, and all worked together to keep him safe. In the end, he survived the war not being deported.)

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I’ll be going into detail as to what I intend to do and how I intend to do it, and seek your wisest advice… I’m full on in the research phase now… the photography, the concept, the reason for the title, what I hope to achieve, my fears and aspirations, my sadness, my journey, hopefully my determination to be able to finish this project as i envision it, as that is what I fear the most: emotionally, this might just actually weigh too much upon my shoulders…

I have no answers. But maybe, just maybe, I could provoke good thought.

Lest we never forget.

a

This is going to be the closing image of what I think is the first major step in the Yakuza project: the photo book “ODO YAKUZA TOKYO”.

Why cherry blossoms? Well, that’s another one of the many enigmas surrounding the Yakuza: “ODO” or 桜道, is literally translated as “the way of the cherry blossom”, and is the credo of the particular family that I’m following. An image of cherry blossoms seems crucial to the book.

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But first things first: yes, the book is finally coming… I’ve found a printer, I’m finishing the design, I’ve narrowed down the paper choice, and I’ve been recommended an incredible binding. More on the book coming very very soon: the design, the model, what’s in it, how I am going about publishing it, seeking support from you guys, how I’m going to try to sell it, etc….

People ask me what the difference is between the book and the magazine (893 Magazine). At first, I’d just keep saying, “well the book is like a book, and the magazine is like a magazine”, but as more and more people started giving me that blank stare, I realized that explanation didn’t quite cut it :-)

I think it’s more along the lines of this: 893 Magazine allows me to bridge the gap between the project and talking about the project.
893 Magazine effectively has given me the much needed ability, the platform to talk about my personal experiences along the way. In fact, one could compare the magazine to an abbreviated, condensed, more permanent printed version of a blog or a personal diary.

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Contrary to the above, the book “ODO YAKUZA TOKYO” is the actual project. The images, all reproduced in the best possible way I can afford, as a perfectly sized tangible book object, a quality package that represents the first two years of photographing the Yakuza.

If the book is the story in pictures, the magazine is talking about the story in pictures. Two different things, but both equally necessary.

So why not combine into one book? For the simple reason that it is time for the book, but the rest of the Yakuza project is not over yet…. there are still many things to come after this first book, and upcoming 893 Magazine issues give me that ongoing platform to talk about this: issue #2 will talk about the process of preparing the documentary film, designing the book, sketching the exhibition, going deeper into the personal life of our fixer Taka, new images along the way, and more…

So there you have it. A sneak peek into what’s cut out for me for the rest of this year. Plus starting several new projects. Gulp. What a workload. But I’m looking at it from the bright side… I’m really, really, really lucky to be doing what I love.

Hugs to all,

anton

I thought this was worth a mention: for an interview about my 893-Yakuza project, which will appear in the forthcoming January issue of Fotografie, a Dutch photography magazine, The Editor-in-Chief Diana Bokje (@dianabokje) does something special… not only does she print an interview which captures our various conversations very well, but she also reproduces 5 complete spreads directly out of 893 Magazine Issue#1, including original layout and texts. Simply amazing that someone not only recognizes but also acts upon the the link between images, layout, typography and writing in the 893-Yakuza project… which is so important… She already knows that I really appreciate this opportunity, but yet again: kudos…. Above are the spreads as they’re appearing: I’ll find out if there’s a way to order the issue online, and I’ll let you know. a

This is Soichiro driving me through the streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo, in his third generation 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R. It’s all white and retro as hell and yes, even though I’m not a car freak, I must admit it’s very cool. I like retro. Click on the image to see a short video of me trying to capture the moment. I never even knew he bought the car, and on the last night that I was there two weeks ago, while my brother and I were walking in Kabukicho debriefing the past shoot, he casually asked: “fancy a little drive?” A little drive indeed. There were traffic jams everywhere in Tokyo, so we had to cut our drive short. In the footage you can see me in the rearviewmirror, desperately trying to hold the camera still… …which obviously didn’t work.

I pretty much dropped everything, and jumped on the plane to Tokyo. Even though he had kept very much to himself and always remained camera-shy, I had observed, gotten to know, and photographed the man for over 12 months; to see him lying there in that hospital bed, in a coma with no chance of recovery, felt very…

human.

The greater context of him being part of a Yakuza family was not relevant to me at that point. I saw before me a dying man. I touched his hand, I talked to him about the little time we had spent together, hoping he’d hear me.

I go to visit him three days in a row. On the third night, at 2.30am, he dies. I offer the family my condolences in the only possible way I can: I look for and print all images I made of him before, and over the course of the next days, during the week long private wake, I repeatedly bring images to them.

His girlfriend and older brother are grateful, and allow me to document the traditional Buddhist rituals surrounding the funeral that is about to take place. But even then, most images I feel I shouldn’t show, they seem too intimate. I’ll think it over…. time will tell. Perhaps in the greater context of the story I’m telling they’ll find their place.

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It was cold those days, and I was underdressed.