Under umbrella in nightime rain, Hachiko Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 2002
Archival Pigment Print
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Traditional home beneath high power voltage lines, Seigo, Japan, 2004
Archival Pigment Print
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Spotting a celebrity outside Kabuki-za Theatre, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan, 2004
Archival Pigment Print
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Scrutinized by fortuneteller, Sugamo, Tokyo, Japan, 1995
Archival Pigment Print
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Samurai vanishing point, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 2008
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Salarimen, Yamanote Line, Shinjuko, Tokyo, Japan, 1996
Archival Pigment Print
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Pony tails, piercing glance and a cigarette, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 1998
Archival Pigment Print
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Pom-poms and pony tails lit by fluorescents, Tokyo, Japan, 2005
Archival Pigment Print
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Picture of a goth, Jingumae Bridge, Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan, 2005
Archival Pigment Print
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Newsstand at night, Shinjuko, Tokyo, Japan, 2002
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Lovely shadow, construction site, Tokyo, Japan, 2007
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Late night TV program, Tokyo, Japan, 1995
Archival Pigment Print
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Elevator encounter, Shinjuko, Tokyo, Japan, 1996
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Cycling accross Sumida River Bridge in Ueno, Tokyo, Japan, 2005
Archival Pigment Print
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Conspiratorial schoolboys underneath expressway, Shin Koiwa, Tokyo, 2007
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Cold rain falling in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 2000
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Chuo Line train coming into Shinjuko Station, Tokyo, Japan, 2005
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Buddhist monk in Shinjuko Station, Tokyo, Japan, 1993
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A drag and a coffee, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan, 2006
Archival Pigment Print
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Relentless flow of Tokyo commuters up from the subway, Japan, 2005
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Absorbed in a newspaper, commuter train near Tokyo, Japan, 2009
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Night phone call and a smoke, Hatagaya, Tokyo, Japan, 2002
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In the path of lenses and avoiding them in front of Kaminari Gate, Tokyo, Japan, 1999
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Gazing out from Shinkansen Bullet Train, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, 2001
Archival Pigment Print
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An ocean going ship sits where it came to rest in the debris of the great Tsunami that hit,
Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, 2011
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Portrait of a young boy found several kilometers inland from the sea, swept there by the great Tsunami,
Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, 2011
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Father brushes his daughter's teeth at an unheated evacuation center for survivors of the Tsunami
in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, 2011
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Recovery workers, probably police, wearing hazmat suits to protect them from radiation, enter 20 km
no-entry zone. Route 6, Minamisōma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
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Rice field salinated by sea water from the tsunami.
Inside nuclear no-entry zone, Fukushima, Japan, 2011
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Sakura (cherry blossoms) bloom and older women climb a hill that provided sanctuary from the mightly tsunami, Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
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Sakura cherry blossoms have opened on a tree that seems to rise right out of the rubble.
Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, 2011
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Once a great forest of 70,000 pines covered this oceanfront before the Tsunami. The land has subsided and the sea undercuts roots beneath the stumps. Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture, 2011
Archival Pigment Print
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Sous Les Etoiles Gallery is pleased to announce "Mangaland: A Tokyo Retrospective," marking photographer James Whitlow Delano’s twenty years working in Japan. Since he visited the city of Tokyo in spring of 1993 at a friend’s urging, James Whitlow Delano has become one of the most informed photographic eyes on Japanese culture. Delano’s substantial oeuvre of photography in Asia, characterized by his ethereal use of vignette and partial defocus, presents complex tableaux of a society at once jaded yet naive, resilient yet vulnerable.
"Mangaland: A Tokyo Retrospective" draws from the long-term project of the artist, Mangaland. The images of Mangaland highlight the tenuous, almost vaporous moments, found within what Delano describes as the city’s “volcanic brilliance.” A young Japanese man, alone in a sea of pedestrians, gazes blankly ahead, the endless high-rises of the city muted but visible through the clear plastic umbrella he holds; three boys sit together under an expressway, their hunched bodies dotting the expanse of concrete all around them while in the distance, the city’s construction is seen puncturing the evening sky; and a young woman in pigtails levels a piercing glance at the viewer, her cigarette held aloft in a moment of frank appraisal. As Delano notes, “It is as though the paranormal flirts just below the surface, just out of reach.”
Also presented are select images from the series Black Tsunami, recently published by FotoEvidence in the new photo book “Black Tsunami: Japan 2011,” depicting the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima meltdown. Together, the two series present not only the artistic merits of the photographer’s work, but also its journalistic imperative.
James Whitlow Delano, born 1960, is an American-born photographer based in Tokyo, Japan. As one of today’s foremost photographers of Asia, Delano’s work is held in the permanent collections of La Triennale di Milano Fine Arts Museum (Milano, Italy); Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX); Museo Fotografia Contemporanea (Milano, Italy); Museum of Photographic Arts’ Dubois Library (San Diego, CA); Noorderlicht Photography Festival (Groningen, Netherlands); and the Permanent Leica Book Archive (Solms, Germany). His work has appeared worldwide in numerous magazines and photo festivals, from Visa Pour L’Image to Rencontres D’Arles to Noorderlicht, and has been awarded internationally, including the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and LIFE magazine), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, NPPA, and PDN, among many others. James Whitlow Delano is a grantee for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. His newly released book, “Black Tsunami: Japan 2011” (FotoEvidence), received a 2012 PX3 Award.
