Topophila is “the affective bond between people and place or setting,” which is “diffuse as concept, vivid and concrete as personal experience,” writes Yi-Fu Tuan1, the author of the book Topohilia2. Tuan also writes, “However, it does – perhaps for the first time – present a general framework for discussing all the different ways that human beings can develop a love of place.”
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I had the intuitive feeling that the act of “photographing ten cities by the same methodology3,” which I have worked on for many years, and the pliable and unique definition of “Topophilia,” advocated by Yi-Fu Tuan, essentially mean the same thing.
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The photographs that comprise this work present a variety of contrasts, which stimulate the viewer to observe and analyze different aspects of the cities. It is nothing but a result of my strong wish for the message of this work to have a positive perspective on what is called “city.”
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In 2005, I started this photographic work as an attempt for comparative urban study of Tokyo and Paris. After that, I planned to choose and shoot eight more cities from all over the world (ten cities in total including Tokyo and Paris) by the same methodology. Through photographing the ten megalopolises, I intended to capture various examples of regularity, generality, and unpredictability that all cities in the world have in common. To achieve this purpose, I thought that at least ten cities would be needed, so that enough data could be gathered.
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I then searched, on the world map, different megalopolises each of which contained a loop line surrounding the center that serves as the basis of development of its urban structure. From the candidates, I selected ten cities equitably from Asia, Europe, and the North America, which seemed to symbolize the past, the present, and the future (However, I have to admit that this selection actually has turned out bearing inequality to some degree).
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At that time, the eight cities other than Tokyo and Paris were places I had never been to. And, in each of them, I stayed for about a month (or a little more).
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The life I led in the city was quite simple. I would take photos once in the morning, and once in the evening. During the day, I would make preliminary inspections for upcoming photo locations, otherwise I walked intently through the town. By putting myself in the street, and in the crowd whenever possible, I was able to feel the air with my skin, trying to sharpen my senses. Based on “the same methodology,” which I myself had set, this was my solution of how to transform the city into the form of photographic expressions. It was also a way to somehow deal with the most important theme: how to make photographs take on emotions, sensations, and passions, and convey the actual atmosphere of the site vividly, under such strict regulation.
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Due to the use of “the same methodology,” the contrast between the ten cities has been brought out very clearly. Each city is composed of a lot of different elements interwoven, yet photographing them from the same angle made it possible to capture their characteristics and uniqueness very vividly.
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New York was built with London as its model, in terms of the urban structure and building design. Also, it was an English architect who designed “Connaught Place,” a symbolic area in the city of New Delhi. In the center of the area is a huge circular plaza, from which roads radiate outward and so the city spreads along the lines. However, what I found outstanding, regardless of this structure, was how clearly the city's residential areas were segmented for the rich and the poor. It seemed like the epitome of a hierarchical society, through which I felt the reality of the city with my skin.”
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Belongings and clothes of Tokyoites are quite similar to those of New Yorkers. Fast food restaurants and coffee shops from the same chains are lined in the almost same way on the street in the two cities. By comparing the two cities, I belatedly re-realized that the current situation of Tokyo is a historical result of the war defeat and the consequent ruling of the US.
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In each city, it was only at the end of my one-month stay that I could grasp the meaning of what it had shown me. Until then, only clues were given to me, which would then gradually pile up toward a full realization. I found every city full of various elements in relation to history, war, ethnics, culture, and politics. It was such a big surprise for me that my work seemed to illuminate them so vividly.
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Having finished photographing the ten cities, I now look over the resultant photographs. Each incorporates my perspective that I had built of the city, as well as presents an agglomeration of various aspects of the city as a whole.
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April 2012
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1: “Topophilia: Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values” was written by Yi-Fu Tuan and published in the US and Europe in 1974. The Japanese edition was published by Serika Shobo in 1992, translated by Yugo Ono and Hajime Abe. It was then re-published by Chikuma Shobo as part of Chikuma Gakugei Bunko series in 2008. 2: Born 1930, Tientsin, China. He is a Chinese-born American geographer who advocated “humanistic geography” and “phenomenological geography.” 3: The methodology is as follows. Photographs are taken in spring or autumn (though in some cities this was not applied) at approximately 25 spots (25 days), more or less along the city's main loop line (road, railway, castellated wall, etc.), with the camera pointing toward the city center. Each day, the times are an hour after the sunrise, and an hour before the sunset. The camera is kept in a horizontal position at the height of 1.6 meters from the ground. Equipment and setting used: 4 x 5 inch field camera / Kodak TXP 320 / 150 mm lens / aperture F45. Tamaki Yura

On the Occasion of Publication of Tamaki Yura’s TOPOPHILIA

Katsuhito Nakazato
Photographer / Professor at Tokyo Zokei University, Tokyo

Under the title of “TOPOPHILIA,” Tamaki Yura has created a huge number of photographs. Her shooting started in Tokyo and Paris in 2005, and was completed in Moscow, the 10th and final city, in 2011.
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A single methodology for photographing was employed in each city. In this book, two photographs taken at the same spot, one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset, are printed next to each other, reminiscent of coupled mirrors.
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Looking at the same place through paired views taken in the morning and evening, we find ourselves running our eyes over and comparing the left and the right, as if doing a “what’s wrong with this picture?” game.
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What impels us to do so is not only the photography’s unique ability of reproducing actual scenes so precisely, with which a view of the city is instantly documented with a vast amount of information, but also the different time slots between two views taken at the same spot, which allows us to detect minute differences between various elements of the urban space, such as light, humidity, people and cars on the street. It unexpectedly reminded me of Noh, where an emotion of anger or a feeling of peace is expressed only through slightly different angles of the mask, while the performer remains almost in the same position.
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According to the methodology, one can only have two chances per day. Yura’s act of carrying her very heavy 4 x 5 camera from one spot to another, day after day, moving ahead as if playing The Game of Life, seems almost like an urban pilgrim doing spiritual trials. It can be said that by visiting the same place twice on the same day in order to look matter-of-factly at the scene with different temporality, the photographer succeeded in grasping the delicate texture of the air floating in the urban space.
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Back to talking about the methodology, it begins with looking for the center, like the bellybutton, of each city. From that spot, a loop road or railway is searched for, like aortas circulating through the city’s heart. When that is found, finally, the shooting along the circular line will commence.
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Now, let us take another look at the selected 122 photographs, shot at 61 places, which are printed in rows throughout this book. We can find certain prominent characteristics in them. –
The ten cities are megalopolises that everyone knows. And, they all have symbolic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arch of Triumph for Paris, Tiananmen Square for Beijing, the Stature of Liberty and Central Park for New York, Big Ben for London, and so on. Nevertheless, because her route was based on loop lines surrounding the city, her photographs are free from such symbolic landmarks (although we can see a distant view of the Arch of Triumph in the background of one pair), thus the photographer succeeded in avoiding associations with stereotypical city images.
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While photographing in the manner of fixed-point observations everyday, she moved in a circular motion around the center, which has given the work a matter of fact and brisk gaze as if taken by a camera moving on rails as in outdoor movie shooting, or by a special car equipped with a built-in camera that was slowly scanning the city.
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This approach is also reminiscent of that of a geographer researching landscapes or an architect observing cityscapes. It therefore totally makes sense that the title of this photo book is TOPOPHILIA, a concept advocated by a geographer, and that Yura used to study architecture in college.
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Furthermore, it can be said that everyday landscapes of the urban space are captured so vividly due to the typology-like photographic style, where the photographer’s personal arbitrariness is as restrained as possible.
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Let me add one more thing. Behind the contemporary cityscapes shown in this photo book, I sensed a sort of wisdom of human beings, which is rarely embodied in visual images, in terms of how ancient people chose a particular place to build the base of a city in the far distant past.
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When encountering a new landscape, how do people deal with, understand, and judge the place? To answer this question, perhaps it is helpful to imagine the time when, for example, Tokyo was a primitive jungle or grassland facing the sea and the rivers.
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No matter how far you go back to the times through Edo, Kamakura, Yayoi, or Jomon periods, despite different values due to cultural and historical situations, natural conditions such as sunshine (sun direction), water (river, sea, brook), wind, temperature, vegetation, soil composition, water drainage, humidity, and so on, would have always been subject matters of serious examination, because of their cruciality to the survival of human beings. In ancient times when we were closer to nature, our visceral sensor to detect the essence of the landscape before us must have been more immediate and sensitive.
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In other words, through those meteorological and terrestrial elements, the earth gives each place an environmental uniqueness, which has been essential and important not only to the life but also to the economic activities of human beings.
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It can be said that today’s urban spaces and sceneries, as a result of their growth over many generations, owe greatly to the foresight of our ancestors, who discovered the place in the very beginning.
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Even after primitive forests and farmlands have disappeared, the earth has been covered, and crowded buildings and crisscrossing asphalt pavements have formed modern urban sceneries, human beings still live in the same places, adapting the living environments little by little. Captured by the photographer, the sceneries of the ten cities clearly show us the huge accumulation of times, of pre-modern, modern, and today, through which cities have been shaped. They also reveal the fact that even today, meteorological and terrestrial elements still lie between tall buildings, within off-street interspaces, and under the shade of trees.
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By being compiled into this book, Yura’s round-the-world photographing tour through the ten cities has been finally completed after a period of seven years.
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Captured through Yura’s affirmative look at the cities, the photographs give the reader a momentum to freely jump over space and time. Furthermore, it is also felt that they show us visions of the future, in which human beings will still have to manage their life in urban spaces.