Photography Project “Tokyo Perspective”

Hongo Kikuzaka Round About

Hongo Kikuzaka Round About

When rushing to catch a train or heading to the supermarket with a smartphone in hand, we walk without even realizing that we are walking. We see only the bare minimum of our surroundings

On the other hand, there are times when we are very aware that we are walking. Often this is due to unexpected reasons like leg pain or getting lost, but occasionally it raises unusual questions like “Why am I walking again?” or “What does it even mean to be walking?”

Taking a walk is not merely walking, it is deliberately putting oneself in that state of “walking.” The appeal of taking a walk lies precisely in the richness of perceptual experience brought, moment by moment, in that state of “walking.” During a walk, everything that meets the eye approaches us indiscriminately, yet with a persuasiveness different from the ordinary. We walk through real space with an intensity of perception and bodily awareness that could even be called phenomenological. It is as if we are swimming through water.

Tokyo / Ueno #001, 2025, C-type print. © Mari Katayama, courtesy of Mari Katayama Studio and Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris

Tokyo / Ueno

Standing in Ueno Park, I recall the question my teacher posed during my very first class after entering university and the tension I felt then – “Do you know what kind of place this is?”

As long as people live, history is made. Back in my student days, I craved explanations for everything, even to the point of demanding reasons for the pebbles on the roadside. Perhaps that’s why, no matter how much I walk in Ueno Park, I can never quite memorize its paths – it never feels familiar.

I use a medium format film camera for my photography. When taking self-portraits, I use a long exposure with bulb mode. To close the shutter, I must manually rewind the film, requiring me to return to the camera. The time lag created during this process renders my body translucent in the image. This is not a result of digital editing or multiple exposures, but a phenomenon born from the physical conditions of the shooting process. My translucent body merges with the uncontrollable scenery and environment, recorded as part of the place’s pattern.

Each time I shoot, I ponder how much harmony we—accidentally born beings—can maintain within this artificially constructed world. Human creations are riddled with mistakes.

Forgetting what I don’t know, and the values and standards I once took for granted, then rethinking them anew. The tension I feel in Ueno Park might be the origin of my photography.

red1, 2025 (from the series URBAN RITUAL /Tokyo2025)

URBAN RITUAL /Tokyo2025

Tokyo has long been firmly established as a megacity. The “10-million-person city” of Tokyo surpassed New York to become the world’s largest population in the 1950s, exceeding 20 million in 1964 and 30 million in 1985. By 2020, it had finally surpassed 40 million, continuing to move forward as the world’s largest.

The metropolitan area extending across administrative districts is visible even through satellite imagery. While the statistical figures are astonishing, it is unclear whether residents actually feel like they live in the “world’s largest city.” Is its interior not this densely populated, contiguous urban agglomeration simply a layered accumulation of heterogeneous “localities”?

I’ve cut out corners of such “localities” and connected them to create a pattern of continuity as an attempt to extract local patterns from a heterogeneous city. For this project, I used the terrain along the Kanda River, where the Tokyo Biennale unfolds, featuring its elevation changes, and the trains running through it as motifs. It’s not Edo Komon patterns born from the playful spirit of commoners, but it could be called a pattern unique to a megacity.

While walking through the city, I can’t help but imagine the creators behind every scene that catches my eye.

Say there is a stone on the road, I interpret it as a stone brought by someone, lying still on the roadside as if holding its breath, atop the actions of road workers laying asphalt and painting white lines. When I see through the gaps a small house nestled between a group of buildings, I find myself comparing the skills and ideas of the master carpenters who erected wooden structures on the burnt ruins after the war with the sustainability of buildings constructed by concrete poured into formwork.

Through my works and projects, I have expressed the causal relationship between “part and whole” created by the continuity of actions. The will of a single nail and the will of the city of Tokyo. What kind of relationship do the creativity producing the parts and the creativity that structures the whole of the city build within human society and the global environment? How does the relationship between part and whole change when I add a single action to that relationship?

In this photographic work, I perceive the relationship between the parts and the whole that compose the scenery as a single expressive form. I then replace my gaze observing that expressive form with a yellow ball, attempting to intervene as a new part within the entire scenery.

*There are three sites that were photographed from indoors. The rules for entering these sites will be noted on the event website and map.

INVISIBLE PEOPLE, 2025 (from the series underpass poem)

underpass poem

I used to live in Kanda. I often went for walks, but there was one place that caught my eye, yet I never stopped to look at it – the underpass beneath the Metropolitan Expressway Ueno Route 1.

The history of the Metropolitan Expressway Haneda Route 1 runs deep. Over the years, exhaust soot has settled thickly on the guardrails and pillars beneath the overpass, turning them pitch black. Modern cars don’t emit nearly as much exhaust, so now, beneath this dirty overpass, I just sense its history. In some spots, graffiti scrawled with fingers is scattered here and there. I often gazed at it during traffic jams.

Much of the graffiti is meaningless, but looking closely, some is written in places people don’t walk, like the median strip, revealing an unexpected intentionality. For this project, when we visited Kanda for the first time in a while to take a walk, we tried wiping the soot with our fingers to draw a poem. It looked simple enough, but the accumulated soot had hardened, making even drawing a single line difficult, and our hands and clothes turned completely black. I think there are aspects of the city you only understand by touching it. We encourage you to try touching it yourself if you happen to be out walking around looking for the spot.

Looking north from Nihonbashi Muromachi, 2025

I once heard as a student that photos of Tokyo taken by people born there are particularly interesting. Perhaps this is because the photographer projects their memories onto landscapes that have changed. Or maybe this is because they have more reasons to press the shutter than someone born elsewhere.

Let’s consider the act of photography as two separate processes – “taking the photo” and “viewing the photo after it’s taken.” When looking at the finished photo, if the reason for taking it is evident, we can imagine the photographer’s memories and emotions, and our own feelings can overlap with theirs. Photographs often don’t come into being the moment the shutter clicks, but from a time further back—from the photographer’s past experiences and memories. I believe this layered sense of time is one of photography’s distinct characteristics.

Then what emerges from the photographed image itself? I wondered if I could start from there. Experience has taught me that the distance between subject and camera determines the type of photograph taken. Yet I wanted to photograph Tokyo, stepping away from the paths using effect that technique usually leads us down.

From the series Backshift 2025

Backshift 2025

The Tokyo Biennale 2025 will be held in several locations where I have previously held solo exhibitions. As if following the old saying that “criminals return to the scene of the crime,” or perhaps driven by some homing instinct, I find myself visiting these places I hadn’t been to in a while.

My memory of briefly displaying my work in these places remains vivid, and the stress from that time lingers. Back then, they were small spots where I painstakingly painted walls and worked on lighting to create a suitable exhibition space. Now, I see it in a different light—as real estate, as buildings and land. The fact that I was involved with these places at a certain time, and the fact that I went to see them again now. I chose photography as my method to connect these two personal points of connection to these spaces through a timeline, like a narrative.

Some buildings remain unchanged from 35 years ago, while others have already been demolished and turned into parking lots. What they all shared was that the people involved back then no longer reside at those addresses.