Frames from a project I shot in Tokyo in December 2006. You can watch it here.
Tokyo
is bigger, brighter, faster, and more beautiful than even my
unreasonable expectations had prepared me for. I'm still sorting
through both the experiences and the footage.
It
took me some time to hit on a shooting style that captured not how
the city looked, but how it felt. Short, dreamy days, long, jittery,
too-bright nights. I didn't really see what I'd done until I got
back. The days have paper-thin depth of field, often the images are
darker than the nights. At night, my brain and eye were taking
opposing positions, and the most diplomatic compromise was to drift
down to three frames per second, letting the camera soak up the light
coming from everywhere, while the traffic and people smeared across
the frame.
Whether this is anyone else's experience of Tokyo I wouldn't guess, but it
resonates pleasantly with my memory of the place, which I hope to
test by returning as quickly as I can manage.