opinions and images by m. werneburg since 1998

streets without names

Tokyo is a street photographer's city. A vast urban landscape made of countless crooked, nameless streets. This is a city where you'll find whole shopping streets tucked away in quiet corners, and a fascinating array of activities going on day and night.

I've now lived here for more than four years, and in that time I've amassed a collection of tens of thousands of photos, mostly taken on the city's streets. I've collected just 119 of those photos and made a small book I've named streets without names.

This is not a collection of photos of temples and Buddhas and girls in traditional dress. Instead, it's a collection of run-down buildings, lunatics carrying huge wooden shrines, and girls wearing paint. If you've ever wondered about the lives of the people who live in Tokyo, join my off-beat tour. I'm pleased to offer a full-sized preview for free.

The book features the city's peoples and places as I encountered them on foot or on my bike or taking my small son on errands. Most are ordinary people going about their day. Some are more exotic like these two with painted contact lenses:

I'm certainly not a brilliant photographer, but I've assembled a collection that I think depicts the city well. It's not all alleys and gawking vendors. I cover some of the iconic wackiness for which the city is famed, like the Akihabara maid sub-culture:

I'm delighted at the chance to share my work with the world. Street photography is mostly about people, of course, a chance for the viewer to get into the scene. Like this team carrying a heavy portable shrine:

Here's the free preview of the book.

Can't see the preview above? Try the publisher's page. Or check out the flickr set that contains some of the photos. Or download the book as a PDF (see below).

I have some of these books from Blurb myself, and can attest to their quality. You can get your own copy of streets without names from Blurb.com, starting at $42.95.

I've always thought it fair to check out a downloadable version of a book before buying it. In that spirit, here's the full-size PDF copy. I've done what I can, but the PDF isn't ideal: the file is fully 160MB in size; the pages are heavily watermarked; and the Blurb.com software chopped the cover off of the PDF.