Naoki Honjo “Small Planet”

Jean Snow pointed me in his blog to the recent publication by Naoki Honjo “Small Planet” (Tokyo 2006).

Naoki Honjo: Small planet (book cover)

Containers, urban buildings, express highways, Tokyo station, parks and people, of which Honjo’s works are consisted. Photographing cities from high places, it would be only colors rather than details of subjects that appeal to people’s eyes. It is like a magic transforming organic view of “created world” into inorganic “fictional world”, like a diorama exquisite yet cheaply made. The strange sense to feel real scenery as fabrication through downward view is the sense of distance of artist’s expression who has seen cities as alien space. A feeling of strangeness as if looking in the border between fiction and reality attracts audiences. A long-awaited debut photo book of the artist is now on sale.
[quote: Little More]

Naoki Honjo: Small Planet

In another comment Jean Snow wrote about the “tilt shift lens photography (or imitation thereof) madness” and I think that he is right with his observation that several photographers from the younger generation are using this technique.

Naoki Honjo: Small Planet

Another photographer who is using the same technique and who comes to my mind immediately is the German photographer Marc Raeder with his Scanscape series. Raeder’s work is IMHO a perfect example of this kind of land-/cityscape photography, which is constantly oscillating between the factual desription of real places and producing the impression of an miniature landscape we know from toy-train landscapes…

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Recommended books:
Naoki Honjo: Small Planet
Marc Raeder: Scanscape

8 Comments

  1. I can reach your blog with no problem.
    Please remember that it is possible to be clocked if you are coming in from the same subnet as the DDOS attack.

    Reply

  2. Dante Lombardi said,
    Does anyone know where Naoki Honjo’s work is available for sale? Is he represented by a gallery?
    .

    The book is available at A Black Ship (see my link list). I presume that Naoki Honjo is not represented by a gallery outside Japan.

    Ferdinand

    Reply

  3. Ariel,

    I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about. Honjo’s book a wonderful view of Japan in a way that most people would never think to see it. It is complete, it is borderline obsessive and it is beautiful. If you don’t think its special, why don’t you tell us why.

    Reply

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