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My adventures with disposable cameras began about 15 years ago. For taking shots of everyday life,  the pocketability and snapshot sensibility were an escape from the bulk of a DSLR camera, and the raw aestheticwas  an antidote to the infinite possibilities of digital retouching.

 

I found an exciting sense of poetry in capturing fleeting moments in a country where appreciation for the transient nature of life and pathos of things is such an intrinsic part of the culture. Over the years I've spent hours sequencing the images to form a narrative to express how I have experienced national and cultural identity in Japan.

 

At the end of 2019, I published DISPOSABLES as a photobook of 119 images. I chose this number as it's the same amount of prints in ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige’s 19th-century series ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’. DISPOSABLES not only finds commonality with some locations in that body of work but also in the themes that place the 'everyday' beside the 'sacred and profane' in the 'Floating World’. Japanese society is often cited for being homogenous, I want to present it in its plurality. 

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Read about DISPOSABLES on DAZED, The Face and The British Journal of Photography. 

 

 

 

This virtual, vertical gallery displays a selection of photographs from the book.

Click on each of the images to view a short passage of text I have added to give each context.

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