Tokyo Olympia

288 × 215 mm
100 pages
Hardcover

Publication Year: 2023
Published by Nieves

Tokyo Olympia is a continuation and reinterpretation of Takashi Homma’s seminal book Tokyo Suburbia. Over six years, Homma photographed the ever-changing Tokyo landscape and the unchanging Tokyo cityscape in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

The book features images that capture the sheer scale of the megalopolis of Tokyo. Among the sites photographed are the old National Stadium, showing its transformation into the new National Stadium; the Tsukiji Market, just before its relocation to Toyosu Market; and the ever-changing buildings and vast vacant lots of Tokyo Bayside.

Takashi Homma is one of the most internationally recognised Japanese photographers active at the front lines of contemporary photography today.

Homma’s photography, possessing a uniquely cool gaze that rejects any sentimentality and portrays its subjects with a characteristic sense of distance and cool tonality, has received acclaim not only in the world of photography but also in contemporary art.

Homma, who started out in advertising and fashion magazines in the late 1980s, moved to London in the early 1990s, where he worked for legendary cultural magazines such as i-D and encountered photographers producing their own work through diverse methods.

Upon his return to Japan, while making magazine media his foundation as a photographer representative of the 1990s, his own photographic works capturing the landscape and people of Tokyo’s suburbs were published in Tokyo Suburbia, which was awarded the Kimura Ihei Commemorative Photography Award in 1999.

Since then, he has continued to exhibit his innovative work both overseas and domestically, influencing subsequent generations of photographers.