This picture is a mistake and I’ll tell you why.😃🤠

   Geisha photography is an activity that can only be done in Japan, and in

Close up of an interesting and unusual Japanese bride hairdo

Kyoto this is reaching its peak. Geisha district is called Gion. Its small cobbled streets, are passing between traditional tea houses, made of wood.

This neighborhood has a specific lifestyle that complies to certain schedules and ancient Japanese customs. Geisha are the ones who animate the life of these places. Through their always fleeting and colorful appearances, they attract everyone’s attention. In order to photograph them, you have to enter the atmosphere of the places, to understand the habits, just like when the subjects are of a completely different nature.

I was in Kyoto at the very beginning of my serious photographic activity. I was seeking to discover and develop a work style that represents me as well as possible. The main attraction among all photographic fields was Street Photography. This has remained forever the focus of my work. Various variants have emerged from this axis, some of them different from what is actually Street Photography. For me, however, all the features have in them the “root” of Street Photography. I will explain along the way in more detail.

So, standing “on the lurk”,  day after day, I kept trying to capture the Geisha and generate some preferably dynamic stories from Gion through my images … the static ones. One of the ways of achieving it was by highlighting all sorts of details. Among them were, of course,  their hairstyle (in fact wigs) and their characteristic painted necks. And day by day, images kept accumulating. The technique was extremely precarious compared to what exists now; my experience in managing huge amounts of pictures was only in the training wheels phase. Above all, I was overwhelmed by the surprise that I have a the fantastic opportunity to be able to see with my own eyes these places and so unique habits.

From all this amalgam, I selected this image which was well accomplished in terms of composition, light, clarity and authenticity. I started presenting it in different places as the “Geisha Head/Feature” made in the heart of a central street in Gion, Kyoto. I was very convinced that it was indeed a Geisha head. The image was extremely well received everywhere, it was one of the most successful images of that period. After … 15 years, recently, I decided to post it on  my new Instagram account, exclusively for my collection of images from various places in the world https://www.instagram.com/provisualstock/. Once more, the image was well received. However, one visitor had a brilliant observation, escaping everyone so far: the image is nott the head of a Geisha, but of a Japanese bride. Of course, for the uninformed eye there is not much difference, but there are details that clarify the situation, the most obvious being the absence of the painted neck …. In fact, this is a mistake in describing the image, a mistake I inadvertently initiated and which has been perpetuated for so long. However, I decided that the title of this image would remain “Geisha ’s Figure”, the quotation marks becoming a permanent component of the title and I will probably find a way to attach its story as well.