In November and December I exhibited my new documentary series and photobook 'Young Ravens'. In December, it was exhibited at @ddd_art_ as part of the NAC Vol.3 Exhibition, and in November at a pop-up exhibition held by @supernice_clothing and @_nuts.tokyo_ at @n4studio_by_hutte , which I was kindly invited to participate in.
'Young Ravens' is my latest documentary project, which follows 'Young Mountains' (highschool sumo), Fire Corps (volunteer firefighters), The Erosion Beneath (Japan during COVID-19), and 'Kodokushi' ("lonely deaths"). Young Ravens was photographed over many sessions throughout the first half of this year. It's a series on the youth culture at a rather unique skateboarding "park". As I wrote in the photobook:
"Young Ravens is a tribute to the good-hearted rebelliousness of youth and the maligned beauty of rough edges. It is a record of those who get back up, tattered and scarred, and of the human yearning for a place to belong and live and love and fly."
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Whenever I participate in an exhibition where the preparation is done by myself, at some point in the process I always ask myself why I decided to this...voluntarily...of my own free will 😆
However, they do come together in the end and are made entirely worthwhile by friends, old and new, co-exhibitors and visitors.
Huge thanks to everyone who came out 🙏
Special thanks to all my co-exhibitors, those who made these events happen, and those who have picked up a copy of Young Ravens 🐦⬛
See you next year.
よいお年を。
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Slide 2 📸: @suzu_san_san
Slide 10-11 📸: @fukukawatakashi
Slide 14 📸: @lifeofgai
In an intense 15 hour historic day I saw Sanae Takaichi get elected as Japan's first ever female Prime Minister.
Ran around the halls of The Diet and Kantei, handholding and manually focusing 400mm for the first time. (Don't do this at home, kids 😅)
Would've been mission impossible in that maze without our amazing politics team. And a big thank you to Ken Suzuki. Was great taking a breather with @suzut_nikkei and seeing some other familiar faces in the field too.
Johan Brooks / The Japan Times
More here:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/10/22/japan/politics/sanae-takaichi-photo-gallery/
In the middle of last year I started a photo documentary project on kodokushi or "solitary deaths." I shadowed a cleanup team as they tackled apartments in the wake of tenants' deaths, photographing the locations and the work, conducting interviews, research, then wrote-it all up. With the help of some great people, a short version of it was published as "The last clean-up: Life and death in a lonely Japan." It is my second non-assignment photo essay to be published by The Japan Times.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/03/31/lifestyle/kodokushi-elderly-death-cleaners/
Many thanks to @slooshiness , @tokyojunkmood , @wheatfu
and Tomoko Otake
#kodokushi #reportagespotlight #documentary #documentaryphotographer #onassignment #photojournalism #photojournalist #currentaffairs
Japan is turning footsteps into electricity!
For anyone not in the know (& good for you), this is a facetious reference to the currently common mismatching of visual content & caption on Instagram by accounts that are automating their posts.
If you scroll at all, you'll likely often find yourself reading that distinctly distasteful formulaic AI cadence. Given how common it is now, I can't help but wonder if people will begin to naturally speak & write with that same artificial twinge.
Comment sections are bot-infested & inevitably involve ping-pong accusations & refutations of AI use. And we even have verified accounts spitting AI responses at their audiences.
The infiltration of misinformation into society's bloodstream of visual content has euthanized the idea that seeing is believing. With fake handheld video & CCTV fabrications becoming so commonplace, how can trust be established or expected?
People have bizarrely fixated on their ability to notice when a hand presents a mangled sixth digit, ignoring the fact that we're only a few levels into this long game. The difficulty will ramp up & our AI-driven AI detectors will face an uphill battle at every turn.
While the majority will carefree-ly consume AI content, a percentage of people will of course still seek out that which is authentically human-made. The only way to really verify or at the very least reasonably believe that something is so without any serious investigation will be by checking track records -- the history of content by the account stretching back through the before times, when AI wasn't rampant.
Going forward, good luck to anyone new desiring to establish themselves as a legitimate human being producing legitimate human-made content on the interwebs.
In the fashion of a cheesy uplifting moment at the end of a dystopian movie, someday, when almost nothing online feels real anymore - and that day is sure to come - there will be a renaissance, a bounce-back shift, a grand migration of people's focus from global to local, from online to non-digital face-to-face interactions. Because even if the person sitting across from you in the cafe is lying to your face, at least it's human.
My article on kodokushi ("lonely deaths"), which was published in The Japan Times, has been selected as a finalist in the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) "Excellence in Photography" category. Up against some great work here, so I'll take this nod and be grateful.
I still don't know exactly how this happened. The woman was leaving the train as the door was opening and her bag strap got caught on the door somehow. The door fully retracted, bag in tow, and the strap got stuck in there. In between the woman's attempts to free the bag, she was profusely apologizing to everyone. A couple of people went to help, myself included, but couldn't work it out -- there was a metal item on the bag's handle that had become lodged in the door mechanism. At one point the woman turned to me and goes "If only I had scissors..."
Once her bag was freed by the station staff, she stood aside and waited as safety checks were conducted. As the train prepared to depart, she repeatedly bowed to the staff, the other passengers and me.
This was a while ago, but I still think about it sometimes, especially what she said.
Scenes from Kyotographie.
Although we focused on Daido Moriyama's exhibition for the article, @whatthusee and I saw a lot over the packed two day press tour.
With one glaring exception, I thought the selection, from Moriyama's street photography to the more elaborate installations of art, was varied and interesting. I particularly appreciated Ernest Cole's work on Apartheid in South Africa.
The overall scenography was nice too, as were the thoughts from the artists.
I also had my first ever fresh vegetable parfait.
Harajuku gals could never.
Many thanks to Margot, Ryan, and the other staff for making this an enjoyable trip.
Slide 1: Sari Shibata's exhibit.
Slide 6-8: The exhibit of Fatma Hassona, a photojournalist in Gaza who was killed, along with her family, at the age of 25.
Slide 9-10: Anton Corbijn at his exhibit.
Slide 12: Lebohang Kganye's exhibit.
Slide 14: Juliette Angel at her exhibit.
Slide 16: Linder Sterling at her exhibit.
*In slide 1, I asked Thu to take another sip of champagne so I could get that shot.
