— Lights and Lines

On my website I described Tokyo: Static in this way:

A foreigner’s investigation of Japanese spaces.

The idea was that of concentrating on moments of stillness in the otherwise overwhelming urban sprawl. People appear frozen as the aim is to portray moments of rest/detachment from city life while focusing on the idea of isolation. Subjects are surrounded by concrete cityscapes – their size is irrelevant when compared to the geometrical infrastructures of the society they live in.

My goal was to produce a body of work that keeps the distance from the stereotypical vision of Japanese city life while concentrating on the idea of loneliness.

I ended up up in Japan quite randomly. I have always been fascinated by the idea of Far East. I went to Hong Kong a while ago, “the perfect bridge between East and West” – that was exactly the problem – there was no great culture shock. Still I wanted to go back and my mind was moving towards China. Then a couple of friends suggested that if I was looking for a place that would constantly blow me away the answer was Japan.
That was it: Japan sounded like the way to go.

I read books, watched movies and all the usual things; nonetheless I approached Japan with my typical western stereotype of a perfect society – a place where order conformity and rules where a given. Indeed it was.
There was no project in plan, I thought I would produce a series of interesting images of city life with some shots of more traditional parts of Japan.

Tokyo: Static was born out of chance. After about 20 minutes that I was in Japan I was talking to a Japanese guy born and raised in San Francisco – we were on a subway train heading to central Tokyo and there I took my first picture of a sleeping man. In that precise moment I did not really think about it as I was overwhelmed by the mass of information received in a small amount of time. I was looking outside the window on this elevated train and contemplating the urban sprawl, the inexhistence of free space, the little streets with tiny houses I often saw in cartoons, the infinite city that made London look like a small town.
The man sleeping on the train represented to me just the first stereotype – I did not realise that sense of emptiness and stillness that surrounded him.

At 5 am in the morning I was jet legged and walking under one of the Tokyo’s expressways in the Imperial Palace area, close to Jimbocho. A man was waiting in front of a zebra crossing. I was looking at the scene thinking why he would stand there waiting for the green light when nobody was around. The city was not awake yet, no traffic, no people, there was some sort of eerie feel.
He wouldn’t cross anyway: this was to me the epitomisation of order. He looked lonely, lost, under the gigantic urban infrastructures of Tokyo. I took the picture thinking exactly about that.

Most of the images I tend to produce are quite contemplative – urban fragments is a good way to describe them; I end up concentrating on stillness and isolation.
At night, when I looked at what I did during the day, I realised that these two images where the ones that interested me the most. I can say that the first one was probably just an introduction to the theme while the second one had some of the features that I like in photography: composition, geometry, urban environment, architecture and human presence. In addition it was portraying an idea of Japan I was not familiar with: stillness.

What I needed was a concept and I was lucky enough to find it straight away.
Isolation, conformity, order, stillness and detachment are the adjectives to describe Tokyo: Static. The expression a foreigner’s investigation of Japanese spaces is something I particularly like – it is the point of view of someone who is spaced out, unable to give a real portrait of a culture he is not part of. The outsider cannot concentrate on the whole thing because he hasn’t got the means to comprehend it. The only route is to concentrate on a detail: this specific idea of isolation was my niche.

I think that the only way for me to create some sort of believable narrative was to depict human beings while strongly inserting them in their surroundings – in this case we are talking about massive buildings, expressways but most of all geometry. It is not only the fact that this is the type of images I personally enjoy and a way to make the images look more Japanese, it also serves as a metaphor for society. The architecture lines and the solidity of these urban spaces that seem to embrace the subjects make them result smaller and even more isolated from the society they live in.

My impression of Japanese society is that of a perfectly functioning organism; it is square, linear and based on conformity. Rules are strictly adhered to and people seem to participate to life in groups – there are uniforms for pretty much every type of job ant they are worn with pride. Everyone in seems to have a role: I took a picture of a man bowing to pedestrians in the middle of a crossroad once the red light appeared and they had made it safely to the other side. Someone else had to stay the whole day in the same spot to inform people that the sidewalk ahead was closed (obviously there was a sign for it).
In their free time they often decide to take part to some organised tours and if they follow fashion, as extreme as it can be, there is still a certain amount of likeminded people that become part of your group and end up using just another type of uniform.

The more people are surrounded by others the more isolated they happen to be. That’s when we need to find a group and behave like ants.

This is obviously not just a Japanese thing, and probably, I am looking at it, again, in a naive way through the eyes of a foreigner. Japan just seemed to make things even clearer, it provided more of a statement.

The question is, what happens when someone ends up isolated?

Links:
Tokyo: Static
Portfolio