The Artful Engineer

Before my trip to Japan, I decided that it would be fun to sign up for a short photography tour. In the end, I chose the Tokyo Vertigo tour by Eyexplore. It was very convenient—available pretty much any night—and was already a private tour so I was able to bring my daughter along, too, for no extra charge. Our instructor/guide was Charles, and he took us to a variety of interesting places over four hours. I have no idea how he found these spots; I can only assume that he spends a lot of evenings skulking around looking for unlocked stairwells.

The unexpected thing about being eight or nine floors above street level is that it feels very quiet and peaceful. Unlike the busyness of Tokyo at street level, you can see almost no one. If you are looking for some solitude in Tokyo, going up seems to be a winning strategy. It was surprising to see people hanging out on fire escapes like the woman in the image above. I am certain that I could have turned that mass of pipes into in interesting image, but her contemplative presence adds so much—it looks like a scene from a movie. (At least it would if square format movies were a thing…) Fortunately, the light in the stairwell attracts the viewer enough to spot her silhouette; otherwise she would be lost entirely. But once noticed, she just looks so very, very alone.

The vaper below is by himself, too, but since he is not so tiny in the frame, the sense of loneliness is not as profound. This image has a lot of things that make it interesting: the near-monochromaticity, the repeating pattern of the stairs and each landing, the man’s near-silhouette that breaks that pattern, and the light behind him that is effectively a hair-light, and, of course, the backlit vapor. One difference between this image and the previous one is that this is obviously a smoke-break and we expect him to return shortly to whatever he would normally be doing; the woman above is just sitting, and this might well be her life.

I really like this next image. If you have been following my blog for a while, you’ll know I love images that have a very narrow color palette as well as images that border on black-and-white; this image could almost be one that was toned with a touch of green. I can tell a lot about what makes an image in my mind by considering what I am grateful for in that image: the heavily-frosted windows that allow only the vaguest shapes to show from inside, the fact that the lights are off behind the middle row of windows, and the corrugated roof that provides some texture.

This next image is more of a study in geometry. Again, it is pretty much a monochromatic image except for the intrusion of the red sign. I don’t usually want things like signs sticking partway into my images, but I think it works here.

This next image was the last one that I decided to include in this set, but I couldn’t resist the combination of grays and golds, especially the way the ductwork on the left echos the window and muted gold of the building on the right. As I write this, I decided to show it larger because it doesn’t have the strong graphic shapes it would need to hold up well at a smaller size; I guess that means that if you are viewing it on your phone, it might not do well. The details—like the dark streaks on the buildings—add a lot of depth to the image. I realize that here we are looking at the tops of buildings that are not usually seen, but I was continually struck in Japan by how fastidious they seem with respect to absolutely everything imaginable except giving buildings a fresh coat of paint every few decades.

This final image is from above the Nakano Sun Mall Shōtengai. A shōtengai is essentially a covered shopping street, although I would consider them, size-wise, to be somewhere between a street and an alley. They are typically colorful and vibrant places to shop and eat; this particular one is one of the most famous ones in Tokyo and looks to be no exception if Google is to be believed. (I might well be the only Tokyo visitor ever to have only been above it without going inside it.) I will have to make a point of visiting this one next time I go to Tokyo, since I enjoyed the shōtengai by—my Freudian typo here was buy—my hotel in Asakusa.

I think pairing these nighttime images with contrasting daylight images of the same structure from inside would be worth trying.

I was very happy with the tour and would gladly sign up for a different one next time I am in Japan. Four hours was long enough to photograph in three different locations and short enough that it was easy enough to slip into a visit to Tokyo. Charles was a really nice guy and provided lots of ideas at each location to get started; I don’t think anyone would be disappointed going on this tour. (Anyone who doesn’t mind climbing stairs, at any rate!) Since most of my images of Tokyo were, quite naturally, taken from street level, these images from elevated vantage points add some nice variety to my collection. A final compliment that I will pay the tour is that I had planned to do a single post with images from this tour, but in the end decided it was hopeless. So, I will share another batch next week. Whereas the images in this post share a gritty, dystopian feel, next week’s set includes some “prettier” city skylines that don’t evoke such a feeling of loneliness.

I hope you enjoyed these images and will come back next week!