Dear friends,
Happy new year!
Grief makes the holidays a difficult time. But reflecting on the past year, I am grateful. As a photographer, last year I exhibited my work outdoors on the streets of Tokyo and also inside one of the city’s most beautiful galleries. I led workshops in Shibuya and I spoke at length about my work with the hosts of Street Life Podcast. And, I realized the publication of my book, Slopes.
In November, I shared with you my process for creating and publishing the next book in the series, Restrooms. That book arrived from the printer over the holidays and is on sale beginning today. I am excited to tell you about it. Let’s dive in.
Restrooms is the second in a series of small, limited edition books that closely examine the features of my Tokyo neighborhood. It contains a photo of every public restroom here—17 in all. (Coincidentally, that is the same number of historically important slopes that I inventoried in the first book, Slopes.)
These are not the hyper-modern restrooms that were built in some other parts of Tokyo during the lead up to the Olympics.1 Where I live, these are utilitarian structures, many of them quite dated and seemingly immune to the changes happening around them.
By photographing features of my neighborhood, I hope to recognize their importance and what they suggest about life here. And perhaps even to preserve their memory— shortly after this book went to press, the restroom pictured on the book cover was demolished.
Restrooms is printed in Japan, at the same press and with the same Japanese-made paper as Slopes. For this volume, I have chosen a charcoal gray box, with the title in silver. Once again, this is a limited edition of 100 signed copies.
Restrooms costs 25 USD, or 2500 JPY if purchased here in Japan. In both cases, the price includes shipping. If you would like to buy one, send me an email, and I will send you an invoice that can be paid via PayPal.
For those who have already purchased Slopes, I am offering Restrooms at a special price of 1500 JPY / 15 USD, including shipping. If you have a copy of Slopes, let me know when you order Restrooms.
I am grateful to everyone who purchases copies of these books. I have a great deal planned for 2024, including some very exciting exhibitions, like nothing I’ve ever done.
To kick things off, in February, I and the other members of VoidTokyo have been invited to display our work at CP+ 2024, one of the biggest and most important camera trade shows in the world. Over four days, the event will host an estimated 70,000 visitors, coming to check out the latest from Nikon, Canon, Sony and the rest. Some of my work will be printed at a very large format—over a meter long! I’ve never seen it that size before, and I am excited (and a bit nervous). I look forward to telling you more about it.
Also in future issues of this newsletter, I will be writing more about what is happening in the Japan photography world. Your support makes all of this possible.
I would like to close this newsletter with some thoughts on my favorite Japanese photobook of the year: Takashi Homma’s Tokyo Olympia. Homma’s other book this year, Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, has received significant international attention, having been published by the British publisher, Mack. It is a lovely book, but I believe that Tokyo Olympia will ultimately be the more important work in Homma’s oeuvre.
Tokyo Olympia is something of a sequel to Homma’s 1998 book Tokyo Suburbia and, like that one, is an oversized board book. This new book contains photographs of the changing metropolis during the six years leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Most are straightforward, eschewing Homma’s recent work with pinhole cameras and the like, although a handful of images that appear to be single photographs are, on closer inspection, carefully composed composites that comment on Tokyo’s quickly changing nature.
Homma captures hypermodern parks and stadiums—even those new toilets I mentioned earlier! But here also are disappearing landmarks, such as the old Tsukiji fish market, and nondescript boarded-up shops. And into the mix of aerial, street, and architectural photography, portraiture. There is a deep sense of loneliness and isolation in these people, raising questions about what was wanted and what was lost.
Thank you again for reading! Please feel free to pass this free newsletter on to anyone who may be interested in Restrooms, or in photography generally. And if you have a chance, you might want to check out the new Wim Wenders film, Perfect Days, which won Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but I have many friends who love it. It is about a man who cleans Tokyo’s public toilets for a living.
With warm wishes,
Joel Pulliam
Those have been photographed by Daido Moriyama in his newest book, The Tokyo Toilet, as I just discovered a few weeks ago.
a