From late-19th century manuals to the “golden era” of the 1980s, this mammoth publication illustrates how photo magazines shaped the development of the medium in Japan

From late-19th century manuals to the “golden era” of the 1980s, this mammoth publication illustrates how photo magazines shaped the development of the medium in Japan
Based in Tokyo, Chinese photographer Wang Lu employs a chameleon-like approach to the medium, exploring subjects ranging from personal history to migration and cultural identity
As a child, Okabe was shy and introverted. Imbued with pain and beauty, her photography illustrates her internal reality: “Perhaps taking photographs is an unconscious healing for my younger self,” she says
The artist’s interest in urbanisation and the photographic process runs through his first UK solo exhibition in over four years
Beyond the cherry blossoms, festivals, and buzzing nightlife, Dan Bailey’s photographs of Tokyo offer a deeper discussion about Japan’s history and its sense of national and individual identity
A newly edited and expanded edition of Jōji Hashiguchi’s seminal photobook is published this month. Here, the photographer reflects on his past, and the time he spent documenting the plight of youth in the 1980s
In 1976, aged 18, photographer Greg Girard moved half-way around the world to a city he knew little about. A new photobook, Tokyo-Yokosuka: 1976–1983, traces his experience
BJP-online Loves Maria Sturm’s You don’t look Native to me, Jean-Vincent Simonet’s psychedelic images of Tokyo, Roger Melis’ photographs of East Germany, Dawoud Bey’s exhibition Places in History, and the fact that MACK’s First Book Award is now open-entry
“I love how the city is in perpetual metamorphosis. It’s always moving and glowing,” says Jean-Vincent Simonet, who visited Tokyo, Japan for the first time in 2016, and quickly decided he would shoot at night. “Giving a liquid feeling to the photographs made sense to me. It reinforced the psychedelic experience of being in the city”.
People in Japan describe Tokyo as a “living entity” – not just because of the earthquakes and typhoons that regularly stir the capital, but because it is a city in constant flux. At all hours of the day and night, streams of people and cars rush down its huge neon streets, which sprawl out like tributaries into pedestrianised roads, stacked 10 stories high with shops, restaurants and karaoke bars. Vibrant city centres seem to emerge right off the back of darker inner-city suburban streets, which are all connected by colossal highways, and an elaborate train network that dwarfs most other capital cities’.