Tokyo Camera Style

John Sypal

Thames & Hudson

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Paperback with flaps with a jacket
288 pages
152 × 210 × 25 mm
ISBN 9780500291672
Feb 2015

A fun take on the ever-popular street fashion phenomenon, celebrating a uniquely Japanese tribe of camera obsessives for whom image-making means everything

Tokyo Camera Style celebrates a uniquely Japanese tribe of camera obsessives for whom image means everything and proving that camera gear does matter, John Sypal, ‘the Sartorialist of the camera world’, introduces us to Tokyo’s style-conscious photography freaks, fresh from the fashionable streets of Ginza, Harajuku and Shinjuku.

In portraits taken on the fly, we see film camera enthusiasts posing with their favourite photographic equipment. Often taken from above, faces out of view, these images in Sypal’s signature perspective show us many telling details: the clothes, the jewelry, hands and feet, shoes and socks, customized camera straps, and other paraphernalia. Individual personalities shine out from every portrait, with the camera taking centre stage. Many rare, customized and vintage analogue camera makes, models and lenses are captured and meticulously identified.

From poptastic plastic to heavy-metal, Tokyo Camera Style is a colourful parade of weird and wonderful cameras and their equally weird and wonderful owners.

About the Author
John Sypal was born in Nebraska in 1979 and has lived in Japan since 2004. He loves film and analogue photography. A self-professed camera geek, he has owned and shot with a Leica MP, Leica M2 + 28mm, 35mm and 50mm lenses; Contax T2; Contax T3; Konica Big Mini; Mamiya 7 + 65mm lens; Pentax 67II + 55mm and 90mm lenses; Fujifilm GA645; Fujifilm Cheki; Fujifilm Instax 210; Polaroid SX-70; and a Polaroid 690. He is photographer and author of the monthly camera-style feature for Nippon Camera Magazine.

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