Space and Culture

Back in 2007 I was happy to report on Nurri Kim‘s fascinating photos of blue tarps in Tokyo, but not as happy as I am today to announce the publication of her new book, Tokyo Blues.

“Now available for purchase or free download, Tokyo Blues is a photographic record of Nurri Kim’s 2002-2003 investigation into this humble industrial material and the very wide variety of uses to which it’s put in the everyday life of Japan.

From construction sites and homeless settlements to cherry-blossom viewing parties in the park, the ubiquitous blue tarp is a constant of Japanese life and a bearer of multiple registers of meaning. In sixty-four images from the boulevards, alleys, sidestreets and interstitial spaces, Tokyo Blues explores these dramatically different contexts, returning something ‘we see too often, and then forget to see’ to full, vivid visibility. The result is a book that provokes its readers to see the city around them with new eyes — whether that city is Tokyo, or their own.”

In addition to 64 beautiful photographic plates and an interesting essay by Do Projects and real-life partner Adam Greenfield, I was honoured to contribute the book’s foreword.

“Perversely enough, after spending some time with Nurri’s Tokyo Blues, I came to see the blue plastic tarp as the symbolic, and maybe even something of the actual, presence of nature in a city and a culture in which that quality is impossible…”

– Adam Greenfield, “Blueshifted”

Tokyo Blues has been published under a Creative Commons license as a free pdf download, but I encourage those taken by things spatial and cultural to get their hands on one of the signed (and very affordable) limited edition books.

Congratulations Nurri & Do Projects!