I’m a huge fan of the Tokyo-based toy and graphic design collective Devilrobots. I’ve paid specific tribute to them on these pages a couple of times, which you can see here and here. And in May, 2012 I got to visit the Devilrobots’ offices in Tokyo and hang out with Kotohiro Nishiyama, who is really [...]
My friends took me to lunch today. We went to my favorite noodle and donburi shop… The green tea was beautiful. I wanted to get in it like it was a hot onsen bath… My favorite lunch is oyakodon. I had a giant bowl all to myself. I was very hungry… After [...]
Sometimes Tokyo is the cigarette you toss into an ashtray full of garbage and water. Sometimes Tokyo is the restaurant you pass by every day but never go in. Sometimes Tokyo is toys you see in a school display while walking from Nakano Station to Shinjuku. (Pictures taken in Nakano-ku and Shinjuku-ku in [...]
Anpanman and a bunny, dangling from a bike in the rain. The bike didn’t look discarded, but it didn’t look too well cared-for either. I imagined a happy child in the seat, riding in the sunshine with his father pedaling through warm air in a better part of town. There are families in Sanya, of [...]
These replica guns, in a Tokyo toy store, they bothered me. But maybe they shouldn’t have. After all, I’m an American. (Pictures taken in Nakano Broadway in April, 2012.)
It was the Monday of Golden Week, and he was sitting quietly by himself playing with a puzzle-form toy at the end of a table on a sidewalk in Ueno. He reacted as if I had distracted him from the most important thing in the world, but also as if he was slightly bemused by [...]
I am midway between 48 and 49 and still enchanted with and charmed by toys. I suppose in a perfect world I would be over my love of toys by now. But I don’t want to live in that world. Happiness is where you find it, even it it’s in a bit of plastic or [...]
Every picture tells a story, and with me the story is usually boredom. I’ve been shooting photographs of varying interest and quality since 1975. That was the year my father brought two brand-new Olympus SLR cameras to our home in Richardson, Texas, after one of his first business trips to Tokyo, Japan. The cameras, an [...]
As usual, my buddy and I weren’t red carpet paparazzi, we were security. It was the only time I could ever see her, ever get close to her. She had her new beau on her arm tonight. It was my sworn duty to ensure their safety. I’d lay down my life for her. I always [...]
I keep an archive on my computer of all the photos I have taken with my current cell phone. And I probably shouldn’t save as many as I do. Too many of them are, like the photos below, on the ragged edge between garbage and art. Oh well, no one hates my work as much [...]
