Images of Pandora: Tokyo 1971-1975 Akio Uchibori

*Available only in Europe
*This book is secondhand.

The first book by Akio Uchibori, gathering black-and-white street snapshots taken in Tokyo between 1971 and 1975 (mole, 1999). Set in the Tokyo of the early 1970s, still charged with the heat of rapid economic growth, it scoops up fragments of the urban everyday — commuters and drunks, signboards, roadside Jizo statues, back alleys, construction sites, posters — with a sharp observing eye and great snapshot skill. Unlike the assertive subjectivity of Daido Moriyama or Takuma Nakahira, its distinction lies in how the murmur of the streets and the presence of people arise of their own accord. A record of Showa Tokyo steeped in solitude, unease, and anonymity, carried throughout by a dry gaze that never settles into nostalgia.