TOKYO INFERNO - OSAMU KANEMURA

Japanese photographer, Osamu Kanemura is renowned for his chaotic cityscapes of Tokyo. 

In this particular frame from his booklet “Stravinsky Overdrive,” is a typical Tokyo scene; Shinbashi to be exact.  Kanemura’s style is almost always visually dark, traumatic, and nauseating with urban clutter slicing the 6x7 frames.  Tangled electrical lines, script from scores of shop signs (green parts), and then at times, offset by a blob of something uninteresting and odd (blue).  You will notice that there is hardly any sky in the frame.  This is done intentionally to add to feeling of suffocation and architectural monstrosity in compressed Tokyo.  Interestingly, this hellish scene is also compounded visually and literally by the DENTSU building (in red) which was under construction at the time.  This building was erected in the pathway of the wind coming from Tokyo Bay (behind the building); so now with the structure complete, cooling winds are essentially blocked, and the temperatures in this area are even hotter during the brutal summer heat.

Osamu Kanemura's website

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