TOKYO BLUES

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TOKYO BLUES
Part 1

Photography may deceive you as a pure mechanical act that just captures exactly what's in front of your eyes. And it does that, most of the times. But sometimes, photographers can project their inner emotional spectrum onto the images taken by the camera. I say this because I thought that the way I felt while staring at these photos - melancholic - related to the memory of me going through a hard time. But then I shared these photos with my friends, and they all felt the same way. The thing is, I don't know if the people I secretly portrayed were feeling sad, or lonely, or depressed. Possibly not. But I felt that way, so I saw them that way. And I made them look that way, though without noticing.

From lonely individuals roaming wet streets, faceless with hoods and umbrellas, to big, quiet, empty places, sensations, emotions and states like insomnia, anonymacy, loneliness, emptiness, distance, and disrepair influenced my shooting process without my full awareness. Since I love documenting subtle moments, I proceeded silently and walked almost inadverted.

I didn't see the sun in the land of the rising sun. But I've always been more of a rain lover.

I captured almost all the photos in Tokyo by night, in autumn, with rain, in alleys, subway stations, sleepy commercial streets, empty karaoke parlors; under massive buildings,with the constant buzzle of machines, bips, alarms, talking artifices, crows cawing, clouds hovering, with individuals immersed in their thoughts, people behind windows working, people behind windows waiting, people behind windows chatting, abandoned gadgets, places of worship.

I'm unexperienced in feeling sad. Yet all my photos were gloomy, and through them, I remembered I was in a struggle. 2017 was a tough year for me. I didn't feel like travelling alone and so far away - something that has always been enormously thrilling to me -. But several things had happened in very little time, and if it wasn't for the plane ticket that I had bought months before, I wouldn't go at all.

For me, photography has always been an escape, an Epochè - a state that the greeks defined as freedom from worry and anxiety -. I did feel nostalgia, literally 'the pain from an old wound', evoked from a series of sad events that unfolded months before. I don't remember feeling depressed while taking these photos, but when I started viewing them, I realized they all pulsed in the same emotional colour. Blue.

Thanks so much if you got to this point, I'd really appreciate your support on my first project on Behance.

Luigi