maddoc
... likes film again.
That is correct and it means originally fuzzy as a state of mind...
"Are, bure, boke" origins from the "provoke" group and means "grainy, blurred, out of focus". How the term "boke" made it`s way into modern usage (aka "quality of out-of-focus rendering") ... I don`t know.
"Are, bure, boke" origins from the "provoke" group and means "grainy, blurred, out of focus". How the term "boke" made it`s way into modern usage (aka "quality of out-of-focus rendering") ... I don`t know.
Isn't Bokeh just a perfectly ordinary, everyday word in Japanese which means 'fuzzy'?
There's an article in German here or google translated which implies that the bokeh was first used as a photographic term in Japan in the 60s and 70s and meant something like camera shake or blur, i.e. quite literally fuzzy.
Reading between the lines, it was then part of a radical aesthetic which aimed at some kind of critique of the modernisation of post-war Japanese society, i.e. everything grainy blurry and raw rather than beautiful and glossy.
My guess is that more recently, as the shallow depth of field look got more popular and people started to need a word to describe how different lenses rendered the oof area, bokeh got co-opted as a word which was already familiar in a photographic context and meant something vaguely similar.
While I'm guessing I'd speculate that this was done in the west rather than in Japan - bokeh would have been a vaguely familiar term to those who were intimate with photography in the US or Europe but the difference between the two uses seems to be a little to great to have been done either by a Japanese-speaker or someone very familiar with the older usage.
Now given that I don't speak Japanese or know anything about Japanese photography of the 60s and 70s, this is all pure speculation
Sparrow
Veteran
maddoc
... likes film again.
... it is the same. It was imported back into Japanese language from English.
Sparrow
Veteran
... and retains the english meaning?
maddoc
... likes film again.
... yes, meaning of the "quality of oof rendering".
historicist
Well-known
On the same note, when I first visited Japan (2005?) I was having a conversation about Japanese words used in English with three young ladies (one of whom had trained as a photographer) and of course thought of 'bokeh'.
They all seemed to think it was quite bizarre to use the word in connection with photography, if I remember rightly they said it was mostly used to describe a confused old person.
They all seemed to think it was quite bizarre to use the word in connection with photography, if I remember rightly they said it was mostly used to describe a confused old person.
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Well-known
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Well-known
Bizarre that they should say this because, bokeh, or, usally "bokeh-aji" (bokeh-taste) is a common term in Japanese in photography. The word bokeh itself simply means blurred, and is also used for people suffering confusion.
—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria Book Project
Sparrow
Veteran
Interesting, another word in the lexicon of Globeish, just after Big Mac
surfer dude
Well-known
It's not overrated by me. I really couldn't care less how others rate it, except to respect that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion on the matter.
historicist
Well-known
The impression I got was that it is a normal everyday word which has come to be used in a metaphorical sense in photography, as it now seems first in avant garde radicalism and then later in the current sense.
Two of the girls had no interest in photography, so this usage was unfamiliar to them (I guess also in English only people fairly keen on photography would know of the word?). The third girl is interesting, because despite being trained as a photographer she hadn't heard of it either.
I think it may have been because she'd trained in commercial phtography, where I suppose they worry more about setting up lighting and stuff like that than studying the history of photography or worrying about their lenses like I do
maddoc
... likes film again.
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Well-known
She mustn't read the Japanese photography magazines then. Asahi Camera, Nippon Camera seem to have an article on it (directly or indirectly) every other issue
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Well-known
maddoc
... likes film again.
I remember very clearly the first time I heard the word "bokeh". I was drinking whiskey at a friend's place one night not long after I first came to Japan back in 1995, and he yelled to his mother dowstairs → おうぃ~ ボケばば、何でもいいからおやつ早く持ってこいよ~
maddoc
... likes film again.
I remember you telling me that your friend teached you proper Japanese ...
Yep, the same guy
tlitody
Well-known
LOL, that explains the confusuion and varying opinions of this thread then. It's all one big circle of confusion.