Street Art Challenge: Tokyo
Globetrotter’s August challenge has been especially fruitful for me. The topic “street art,” whatever exactly we mean by that term, fits perfectly with how I like to spend my free time: Wandering new and familiar places, camera or smartphone in hand, peering around corners and down dead-end alleys looking for the over-looked, appreciating the under-appreciated.
Perfect street photography mode!
At the beginning of the month, I shared snaps from the (not so) mean streets of Toronto after returning from a trip, the first in five years, to my first adopted hometown.
Now I’m back in Tokyo, my second adopted hometown, and every day I try to break up my commutes in this record-breaking rice cooker summer heat and humidity by once again turning left instead of the usual right at intersections and walking the city’s labyrinth of hiways and biways with “beginner eyes.”
In fact, despite the fact that I have been shooting street photography in Tokyo for at least a decade now, this month’s challenge has re-focused my attention on all the forms of street art, intentional and otherwise, that decorate this ancient, postmodern megacity.
Turns out, I have much to learn and see about street art in Tokyo, and I expect I will have my viewfinder literally and metaphorically seeking out new perspectives on a subject which I had started to take for granted.
This challenge post launches the first step in this newest adventure :-)
Shout Out
This month’s topic gave me a chance to visit places and see street art in places I may never get to visit firsthand. However, I want to get a special shout-out to Catherine Duchesne and Melissa Rach for highlighting the social and political, as well as the artistic, side of street art.
