Yasutaka Kojima

Tokyo (2015) serves as a critical anchor in Kojima's broader photographic trilogy of urban landscapes, which meticulously investigates the structural environments of New York, Berlin, and his native Japan. Moving away from the frenetic, neon-drenched cliches of the metropolis, Kojima approaches the city with a deliberate, almost clinical detachment. The project operates as a profound meditation on the psychological weight of the contemporary cityscape, exploring how sprawling concrete infrastructure and the relentless march of redevelopment isolate the individual. By capturing the city as a complex, interlocking grid of architecture and human absence, he constructs a visual narrative that questions the very nature of urban belonging and the transient reality of modern time.

Aesthetically, the monograph is defined by its rigorous structural geometry and muted, atmospheric control. Utilizing precise framing, Kojima flattens the chaotic depths of the skyline into tightly woven, highly detailed tapestries of glass, steel, and concrete. The compositions frequently rely on elevated or distant vantage points, eliminating the immediate street-level noise to emphasize the sheer scale and imposing verticality of the built environment. He masterfully captures the city in a state of suspended animation, utilizing diffuse natural light to render the industrial surfaces with a distinct tactile weight. This careful spatial organization creates a compelling structural friction between the overwhelming physical density of the architecture and the stark, isolating emptiness of the spaces themselves.

With “Berlin,” Japan-born and Berlin-based photographer Yasutaka Kojima presents the third entry in his series “Naka-ima,” following New York and Tokyo.
Shooting in black and white, Kojima photographed walls, doors and entrances all over the German capital. Flattening the distances of three-dimensional space and ordering visual elements like stairs, pavements, windows, trees, graffiti, flowerpots, ladders, tiles, flaking paint, ramps, metal fences and myriad other objects into eerily pleasant compositions, Kojima aims not only to explore space and its possibilities but also the constraints and deeper meanings of transient time.

“Time, in [the Koshinto concept of Naka-ima], is a circulation of temporal flow, forming a single circle in which beginning and end coexist, an endlessly turning ‘eternal now.’”
― from Yasutaka Kojima’s afterword

“Kojima’s photographic process begins by encountering a place first; the camera comes later. He does not ascribe excessive meaning to individual features such as windows, graffiti or stains on walls. He neither closes in enough to create abstraction nor steps back enough to capture a landscape. Instead, he maintains a transitional distance, facing his subjects with a refreshing sense of clarity that almost erases his own presence. There is a certain elegance and grace to his approach.”
― from Risaku Suzuki’s essay “A transitional distance”