Seen: TOKYO STYLE／LIVING ROOM Place M 30周年企画展
Who: Kyoichi Tsuzuki／Masato Seto 都築響一／瀬戸正人
Where: Place M, Shinjuku
When: November 13 - 19, 2017
A dual series of domestic Tokyo photography made for an unexpected treat in Shinjuku this week- Pairing Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s TOKYO STYLE with Masato Seto’s LIVING ROOM was a smart move on behalf of the gallery. Both series were created in the early 1990′s and deal with apartment interiors as subject- rooms which exist as evidence and expressions of the people who lived within them. Seto’s images are in black and white and prominently feature the individuals who made those particular spaces theirs.
Tsuzuki’s TOKYO STYLE takes the opposite approach and lets the dwellings themselves speak for their occupants through a straightforward and detail-saturated gaze that revels in reality as opposed to traditional design-mag ideals. (Much to the chagrin of joyless single-star amazon reviewers.)
TOKYO STYLE has been published in a few iterations since its debut in 1993- the first image shows my latest copy, a hardback 4th edition from 1996 that I picked up a few years ago at a Book Off.
Looking at these photographs in the gallery now in 2017, so many years after they were taken, I was struck by how different they feel now. Certainly the 4x5 film aspect had some effect- and sure, the TVs are different- but it’s hard not to get sentimental about the physical collections of media you see in homes- or for better or worse, find yourself reminiscing over a pre-smartphone/internet-ed world.
My first encounter with the series was in the small paperback English edition in 1999 or 2000 that I bought at a shop in Nebraska. I had already been to Japan once by then and I spent a lot of time flipping through its pages dreaming about someday living in Tokyo. I guess that’s what tumblr is for now. I have to admit that while the vintage tatami-floored large-windowed wooden apartments that appear in the book still look as beautiful as ever, after fifteen winters here there’s no way I’d ever actually be able to live in one.