GARDEN STATE SAMURAI

EDGAR E ENDRESS & MARK STOCKTON: SAMURAI

Ritual suicide, tribal warfare, undying fealty, and spiritual enlightenment make an extremely seductive recipe. It is no wonder that Samurai, possibly the most heroic of warriors, have become for some the ultimate role model. The Samurai’s ancient desire to find honor and order in the chaos of life is alive and well today. Originating in 9th century feudal Japan from humble beginnings as hired mercenaries, Samurai evolved into a powerful elite by the 18th century. As part of their lifestyle, they dedicated themselves to mastery in the fine arts of dancing, literature, poetry, and calligraphy, as well as their famed prowess in the warrior’s art of combat. In his book Hagakure (In The Shadow of the Leaves) written in the early 1700’s, former Samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo elegantly articulated his version of the Bushido—the Samurai’s martial, spiritual, and ethical code. In addition to the more familiar ideas of loyalty, honor, and duty, it emphasized the acceptance of death as the pre-condition for living an honorable life. It is not surprising that such forceful ritualistic sentiments embraced by the—with clearly defined lines between good and evil, honor and dishonor—have spawned a multitude of celebratory films, texts, animations, and photographs spanning the last hundred years.
Fluid and variable, the ‘Way of the Samurai’ has permeated the pop cultural landscape of every new generation. The deeply heroic portrayal of the self-sacrificing exploits of Ronin—Samurai without masters—in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), inspired many western filmmakers to transpose the highly disciplined and effective martial skills of the warrior onto the cowboy, resulting in such influential films as John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960), and later Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western trilogy—A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966). More contemporary examples include Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill diptych, that aside from its multitude of filmic quotes and references, was an undisguised homage to the Katana—the Samurai’s curved, single edged sword used to dispense justice and preserve honor—which we see wielded by two highly seductive female mercenaries. Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai (1999), by Jim Jarmusch, is perhaps the most appropriate parallel to Edgar E. Endress and Mark Stockton’s photographic project, which like the film, is set in New Jersey and best exemplifies the spirit of the Bushido in a contemporary context. ‘Ghost Dog,’ an African American assassin, lives and dies by the code of the Samurai, employing the ancient methods in his work for the local Mafia. Such shape-shifting propensities—killer cowboys, vixen assassins, and Mafia hitmen—are a testament to the Samurai’s continuing impact on global culture, the fascination in part due to their strict ethical and philosophical code and uncompromising and effective killing methods, providing death with a degree of meaning and order.
Nestled in Mercer County Community College in Trenton, New Jersey, is a youth club dedicated exclusively to Japanese culture. Inspired by representations of Japanese rituals and traditions in film, anime, and Manga, the members—who invited Endress and Stockton to observe their ways—learn Japanese and explore key moments in the country’s evolution. Captivated by the role of honor afforded the Samurai warrior and the sophistication of early Japanese society, Trenton Club creates exquisite replicas of period costumes and performs fictive elaborations on the rites they have scrutinized. Role-playing and dress-up are familiar activities for history fanatics––Civil War re-enactors and pilgrims to colonial Williamsburg, committed to recreating every miniscule detail of life a century or two ago. At the sub-cultural level fetishists––bondage and discipline aficionados and plushies (adults who dress up as large stuffed animal toys)—also perform elaborate rituals through costuming to create alternative realities. By comparison dressing as Samurai and enacting fighting strategies with swords is not all far-fetched. As in Ghost Dog ethnicity seems largely unconsidered as the predominantly African American membership of the club adopt these personae in the contemporary manner of treating all world traditions as selections from a great cultural smorgasbord.
Analogous to the club’s anachronistic costume and ritual posturing is Endress and Stockton’s method of representation, that of the anaglyph—a stereogram comprised of two layers, one red and the other cyan, that when viewed through chromatic lenses produces a three-dimensional image. Endress and Stockton’s extraordinary
large-scale anaglyph portraits of club members are difficult to locate geographically or chronologically as they were taken in the anonymous forest landscape behind the community college. Their enduring quality is further enhanced by the figure/ground ratio and static poses that recall early Civil War photography that due to technological limitations made successful action scenes difficult, preferring staged or still shots of the dead or dying, or officers reclining after a hard day’s battle (ironically, their technique is reminiscent of photography at the time when Japan was being forced to open its doors to the West). The use of the anaglyph also conjures our more recent cinematic past, that of the “Golden Era” of 3-D movies that spawned such classics as The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), requiring entire audiences to wear disposable chromatic glasses while viewing the film. Endress and Stockton’s project, like the 3-D movies that came before, is brazenly theatrical, requiring the audience participate in the ritual being performed, donning the traditional glasses and surrendering to the theatre of Bushido.

EDGAR E ENDRESS & MARK STOCKTON: SAMURAI
UCR/CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY OCTOBER 28 – JANUARY 7, 2007