Where the streets have no names...

I seek the human. Not in its flesh incarnation, but in its manifestations and creations. Human is quirky and funky, messy, organic. It can't be found among the template-perfect townhouses that have taken over much of Tokyo's neighborhoods. So I seek out the pockets of aged cheese that still stand.

It's all about community. Most of the things I shoot are in the process of disappearing. Money flows dictate the fate of neighborhoods--and big capital has no use for real community. The small plots of land around houses, with their plum trees, jasmine blossoms, mikan and loquat, are what makes a neighborhood real. The little shops are what hold it together. Lose these things and we lose ourselves.

So this is a document of leavings and encrustations, both human and natural, mostly in Setagaya ward--its little lanes packed tightly and nonsensically as circuits on a defective microchip. Now other places are coming into the picture, as I find the need to wander further afield.

Some earlier pictures, unrelated to my morning walks, are also hanging about.

Hope you find something interesting here.

PS

A favorite quotation from my favorite photographer:

"I attribute to photography the task of recording the real nature of things, their interior, their life. The photographer’s art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time. A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it’s marked."

-André Kertész