Les Couleurs de Tôkyô

Photographer: SONIA HAMZA

Multimedia editor: MARIA TERESA SALVATI

"This series Les Couleurs de Tôkyô has been inspired by a trip of several months in and around Tôkyô and through these images I wanted to explore the daily life of some Japanese. Japan is a country of contradictions both fascinating and confusing. These triptychs illustrate the country where tradition is never far from modernity.

Japan, a codified country where extremely perfectionist people become a ruthless work machine. Everyday life is set like a metronome, but with an incredible technological creativity also involving arts and crafts.

Discreet elegance can be found in every detail as well as in words and attitudes. Japanese tirelessly seek to control and anticipate the weather, the environment – particularly cruel – and people’s behaviour. For every Japanese, mistakes and failures become sources of challenge and improvement.

In this series, I am honoring courageous Japanese people who support each other and who can be both paradoxical and enriching.

At the same time, I was living a personal romantic story with a Japanese guy. I started to create a parallel between what I was observing in the society and what I was living in my life and with my feelings. Like through a prism, which selects the experience of one person, my own one."

by Sonia Hamza (Japan – April and October to December 2012)