SCOPIO ABOVEGROUND: CITY
Over my years spent in Japan on and of, I have always been amazed that the city never ends.
On paper it does, one municipality takes over where another ends, but in terms of real appearance it never does.
Te fringes of the cities, becomes like a delta of a river merging with the sea, salt and sweet water mixes. Here it is the farmland and factories that mixes with the building blocks of the city, the houses shops and restaurants.
Tese cities we never hear of that are anonymous to us, but creates the backbone of a country’s' economy interest me, in that here is where you can see efects of living in its purest form. Its about survival about making ends meet.
Gone are the lifestyle set design created by the commercial powers that are so incorporated to our lives.
Here you fnd the smaller traders the individual factories, shops, cafe's that are surviving by self promotion and self advertisement by hard work and by will.
Once a big corporation moves in many of these are the frst to go.
To me Japanese cities in many cases still are able to retain a strong sense of individual character based on all these individual traders, in opposition to for example Sweden where most cities now, though city planing wise are diferent, are all more or less constituted by the same building blocks and the same cooperate brands and franchises.
I wanted to start documenting these areas, as the city is a changing force. It will grow or decline, maybe even diminish based on surrounding and also not always predictable forces. In japan for example an earthquake can change the economic landscape in a snap of the fngers. But even in comparison modest changes such as a new highway can infict great changes to an area.
Synopsis:
Japanese cities are not only Tokyo they are everywhere and in comparison totally anonymous and normal.
Technical notes
On my shoulder an 5D MKII, and good hiking boots
Contact
christofer@christofer.co