Tokyo Nobody

Tokyo is a metropolis of over 12 million populations. With such crowded place, how does one imagine it to be empty without any human being? Masataka Nakano seemed to be able to do just the impossible. Not only was he able to imagine so, he even captured the whole city (well, almost) through his camera lense into his masterpiece, a 96-paged photo book, namely Tokyo Nobody.

How did he do so? All he needed is going out venturing into the city at the oddest hours of the day and waiting for the right opportunity to capture a single shot of Tokyo totally deserted. And he took 11 years to do so.

As commented in Multilink Magazine, “For 11 years, photographer Masataka Nakano has kept watch for the most impossible of scenes: central Tokyo street scenes inhabited by nobody. These aren’t manipulated composites but rather the result of a dedicated opportunist. There’s something very eerie about these desolate moments and their startling absence of congestion, usually so integral to the portrayal of this environment.”

The photobook is not new. It has been released back in September 2007. For those who are interested to get a glimpse of the images check out Masataka-san’s gallery at Art Unlimited.