Tokyo in Black and White

Colour does a lot of the work for Tokyo. The neon, the vending machines, the red of a torii gate against grey sky. Strip it away and something else appears — a city that is quietly, stubbornly, architectural.

Shooting Tokyo in black and white forces you to slow down and look differently. The latticed steel of Tokyo Tower at night becomes something almost abstract, all geometry and shadow. A building facade — all intersecting triangles and negative space — stops being a building and starts being a pattern. The light and dark do the talking.

And then there's Jimbocho. Tokyo's legendary book district doesn't need colour at all. It never really had it. The secondhand bookshops that line these streets are worlds unto themselves — shelves stacked floor to ceiling, handwritten price signs, a lone figure bent over an outdoor table, flicking through something that might be a first edition or a forgotten paperback. Nobody is in a hurry. Nobody ever seems to be in a hurry in Jimbocho.

That's what black and white gives you in Tokyo: the noise falls away, and what's left is the city's bones. Steel, paper, shadow, and time.