Ikebukuro

TOKYO

RECLAMATION

“What Tokyo will look like in the future is anyone’s guess. Buildings, like fashion, rarely last, and the city, reconstructed three times last century-following the Great Earthquake of 1923, the firebombings at the end of World War II and as a prelude to the 1964 Olympics-remains a scene of unbridled architectural chaos. The only constant it seems is change.” Kiely Ramos.

Tokyo Reclamation is a large scale photographic collage series that re-imagines / re-con- structs four areas of Tokyo (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ueno and Ikebukuro) from photographs tak- en over a two week period in 2011-2012. In the absence of a grand vision, Tokyo derives its sprawling amoebic-like order through chaos rather than rational planning. From this chaos emerges an uneven fabric of fleeting beauty, wild diversity, a sense that the unexpected is lurking around every corner and a feeling of living in the moment knowing all of this will eventually change. These collages seek to capture this fleeting moment of time as it pushes relentlessly into the future.

Michael Conway. 2012.