Yoshiyuki Okuyama Photo Collection "Windows" Regular Edition

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Price: 10,000 yen + tax
Book Design: Kaoru Kasai, Yuki Adachi
Size: H194mm x W205mm
Page: 752 pages (724 items included)
Binding: Cloth Hardcover
Weight: 1.68kg (thickness 5.5cm)
Published in June 2023

*The standard edition is bound in ochre-colored cloth, evoking the natural materials of wood and earth that characterize houses.

Product Information

release date 2023年6月16日

Part numberMbk9784865411713

Specification A portrait of "Tokyo" depicting people through windows

Yoshiyuki Okuyama's new photo collection, "Windows," is a series of approximately 100,000 photographs of opaque glass windows taken in Tokyo over a two-and-a-half-year period from April 2020 to November 2022. This book contains 724 of these photographs, which Okuyama took for the first time using a digital camera.

During this time of COVID-19, Okuyama, who has been traveling abroad less frequently, walked around the streets of Tokyo and noticed the expressions of windows. Many of the windows facing the street are made of opaque glass such as frosted or figured glass, allowing various everyday items inside to be seen through them.
Kitchen and bathroom plumbing, figures, flowers, laundry, posters, umbrellas, Shinto shrines, bicycles... The interior space trimmed along the window frames becomes an abstract pattern, and while it also contains shadows and reflections from the outside, it makes you imagine the presence of someone living there. It was the moment when each window became a portrait of the people of Tokyo. When you look into the window through the camera viewfinder, what seemed to be the separation between inside and outside becomes a screen, and the flat surface takes on a new depth.

Tokyo is a city where different things are built close together, creating a city that is constantly in flux and over-generated.
Okuyama believes that opaque glass windows reflect the distance between the people who live there, and that historically they originated from shoji screens that let in outside light even while closed. "Windows," which connects windows to architecture and culture, is also a valuable record of the times.

In his previous work, "Flowers" (published by our company in 2021), Okuyama depicted a dialogue with his late grandmother through flowers, in which the gaze from inside to outside through a window overlapped with facing a certain person. In this work, he dialogues with a stranger by looking from outside to inside, and the individual and unspecified portraits will naturally reflect the society at his feet.

Rather than being specimen-like, "Windows" fluctuates between representation and abstraction depending on the light and distance, coexisting with vivid images. It marks an important turning point in Okuyama's work, and its unique way of capturing the present and people offers deep suggestions.

"In Tokyo, a city packed with buildings and filled with complex cultural layers, I saw the expressions on people's faces in the opaque windows, which could be considered a kind of symbol.
Staring out the window felt like staring into the eyes of a stranger.
It is my sincere hope that this quiet exchange of glances can become a portrait of the people living in the city of "Tokyo." (From Yoshiyuki Okuyama's preface)

■ Yoshiyuki Okuyama
Born in Tokyo in 1991.
Winner of the 34th New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award and the 47th Kodansha Publishing Culture Award Photography Award.
His major photo books include "flowers" (AKAAKA Art Publishing), "As the Call, So the Echo" (AKAAKA Art Publishing), "BEST BEFORE" (Seigensha), "POCARI SWEAT" (Seigensha), "BACON ICE CREAM" (PARCO Publishing), "Girl" (PLANCTON), "The Town Where You Live" (SPACE SHOWER BOOKS), "Los Angeles / San Francisco" (Union publishing), "The Good Side" (Editions Bessard), "Ton! Tan! Pan! Don!" (bookshop M), and the Taiwanese edition of "BACON ICE CREAM" (Genten Publishing), among others.
Major exhibitions include "As the Call, So the Echo" at Gallery 916, "BACON ICE CREAM" at Parco Museum, "The Town You Live In" at Omotesando Hills Space O, "White Light" at Canon Gallery S, "flowers" at Parco Museum Tokyo, and "THE NEW STORY" at POST.

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