Season’s Greetings!

All the best for you in 2025!

I plan to publish a photo book "Far Away from Here…" early next year based on this prototype that I’ve just posted on the web. The photographs in the book are taken from the results of three recent projects, and are the footprints of my travels over the past several years, both near and far.

At the root of my travels, there is always a “centrifugal force” at work. It’s the workings of my mind and body to detach from this excessively concentrated metropolis. Tokyo is a skin of “the present” that constantly has a high metabolism, and yet it lacks the body of “history” beneath it.

In this country, leaving Tokyo means traveling back to the past. For me, now in my mid-sixties, this journey back is almost a physiological need.

"C'est quoi pour vous la photographie ?" has been just released!

The CHIBI association in France has published an ambitious book of photography, “C'est quoi pour vous la photographie ?”. It can be called the theory of photography in words and pictures by 100 Japanese photographers, including Daido Moriyama, Yasumasa Morimura, Miyako Ishiuchi, Toshio Shibata, and others. I’m honored to be one of the contributors to this project. You can see the contents of the book from here, though the resolution isn’t high. Take a look, please!

A Feature on My Project “Whispering in the Suburbs” in ADFPHOTO.

While a rescue operation from a major earthquake is going on, a large number of people are killed in war and some countries seem to be prepared for another military action.

The world is full of inconsistencies and it’s a shame that we easily get used to the contradiction.

It’s not so difficult for us to digest a tragidy as far as it is nothing but a piece of information about the tragidy…

Francisco González, an independent curator published a feature on my project “Whispering in the Suburbs” on the website ADFPHOTO.

It’s worth reading thanks to his deep insight into our modern society and civilization.

Visit the following page and enjoy it.

¡Muchas gracias, Francisco!

Toru Ukai «Whispering in the Suburbs»