PANDEMIC KYOTO

These photos were all taken between 2020 and 2022, in Kyoto. I think street photography has a role of showing our present time and documenting what's happening now, whether is good or not. I don't think Shomei Tomatsu was having fun photographing post-war Japan, neither Steve McCurry and Alex Webb in 9/11 NYC. In Japan, the already well-reserved citizens became even more distant, the masks and suspicious looks are trendy and we don't see the joy we used to see on streets. But emotions are there. We just have to squint our eyes a little bit.

More specifically in Kyoto, things dramatically changed since the beginning of the pandemic. The city was always full of people from all over the world and now the temples and shrines are home to its original visitors: Japanese worshipers who are now in peace to pray in silence, asking for better days. 

The city's atmosphere is completely different. Everyone is a potential threat, and there is a kind of tension suspended in the air. Arata Isozaki, one of the famous Japanese architects once said this about the post-war Japan: “I could fell that history was disrupted. At the same time, there was a sense of complete stillness, from which maybe another time or another history could start. Like in the movie The Matrix, two or three parallel worlds were crossing."

That's what I tried to capture in this small series.

The final project is a “Zine” with 60 images available in PDF and in printed version, available here.

Check out some images on the gallery below: