“One day an old man in a plain suit sat next to me by a pond in a park. He began to put powder on his face and changed into a woman’s long-sleeved kimono. He started dancing to an enka – a Japanese popular ballad – playing on his radio cassette recorder, a big smile on his face. “What’s going on?” I was curious. He told me that he was a master of Japanese traditional dance, a homosexual, and that he had cancer. On another day I met an old millionaire in underwear who rode a clumsy bicycle, and yet another day I met a devilish-looking man who in fact was a mummy’s boy. The park is Ueno Park in Tokyo and the pond is a big lotus pond called Shinobazu-no-ike. As I went there more often, I met more people like them. Before long, I began to take photographs of them and to hear more of their stories.”
That’s the introduction to the work by Tsutomu Yamagataa called Thirteen Orphans, an introspective look by a brilliant photographer into human society. Where there is photography, there are stories. And for artists like Tsutomu Rinse is a place to showcase and tell photo stories, promote, discover and explore photography to add depth beyond other photography sites that only focus on discovery/inspiration.
Founded by Kenzou Yeh, Rinse is an invitation-only community for talented and creative photographers to share and showcase their great work. To ensure the quality, only those qualified work reviewed by the team will be shown. Managed by a team of photography enthusiasts the drive to build a space for sharing stories behind photographs comes from their own passion and commitment along with those of the photography community to give more to the viewer to share more about the majesty behind each creation.
Emerging artists can use the portal that feels like the brilliant blogging networks of Medium and Svbtle to balance sharing their artistry with letting the viewer discover and build on their own as well. Each story begins with a gallery of images and then shares the photographers’ thoughts. Sometimes it’s the breathtaking story behind Thirteen Orphans other times it can be the inspirational thoughts from a field trip in Bandung, Jogjakarta and Temanggung by Irnindya Putri Nugroho.
The stories are endless and plentiful, yet a clean and crisp platform to not only write and share but discover. Any artist wanting to tell their stories will come to love Rinse, and we’ve already fallen endlessly in a love spiral with site looking to dig, learn, and read more.