YKTO

YKTO contains over 1,800 photographs by Tomoyuki Sagami of buildings and houses constructed in Japan soon after World War II. Presenting images taken between 2006 and 2017 in Yokohama, Kawasaki, Tokyo and other cities (hence the book’s title), Sagami creates an archive for future generations of idiosyncratic architectural styles that are disappearing due to changing laws and lifestyles, and the ever-growing Japanese metropolis. Sagami adopted a systematic, impersonal method for his project: while employed to post advertising flyers in various neighborhoods, he photographed the particular area he found himself in, block by block, without any prior knowledge of its geography. The resulting images of homes, shops, streetscapes, gardens and alleys are eerily absent of people and free from any personal emotion or inclination on Sagami’s part. YKTO is a timely topography of a rapidly vanishing form of urban existence in Japan.