CLOSED CIRCUIT

Ikuya Sawada's closed circuit is a photobook centered on the "station," a public space that is both the most familiar to urban dwellers and yet rarely consciously perceived. It is a book that visualizes the unconscious of the modern city by pointing a camera at a place that countless people pass through every day but no one pays attention to.

What is depicted is an excessively homogeneous and bleached space, born from the relentless pursuit of safety, cleanliness, and efficiency. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, stations temporarily shifted to power-saving mode, but soon again became filled with light. This sight reveals the very structure of a city where systems of consumption and movement recover as if nothing happened. To borrow Osamu Kanemura's words, it is a landscape that continues to circulate as a "closed circuit."

Inorganic lighting, polished floor surfaces, standardized signs, anonymous flows of people. Sawada captures these elements with a detached gaze, bringing out the strangeness and tension lurking beneath the ordinary. Familiar stations transform into places that are somehow bizarre and unreal.

Art direction by Hideki Nakajima, editing and commentary by Kenji Takazawa. This photobook, where the criticality of urban space intersects with the intensity of photographic expression, symbolizes Tokyo in the 2010s.

[Title] CLOSED CIRCUIT
[Publisher] THE WHITE
[Publication Date] July 1, 2017 (First Edition)
[Number of Pages] Unpaginated
[Size] Approx. 185*275*10mm / 455g
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] CLOSED CIRCUIT
[Author/Editor, etc.] Ikuya Sawada/Author, Kenji Takazawa/Editor and Text, Osamu Kanemura/Text, Hideki Nakajima/Art Direction
[Printing] Yamada Photo Engraving Co., Ltd./Printing and Binding
[ISBN] 9784990942700
[Condition] Used [9] Excellent
[Accessories] Obi
[Included in] -
[Related Exhibitions] 

Ikuya Sawada (Sawada Ikuya) 1970–

Born in Tokyo in 1970. Photographer.
Studied photographic expression by participating in Osamu Kanemura's workshop. His works focus on urban and public spaces, using the camera's record-keeping and mechanical qualities to highlight landscapes and structures overlooked by everyday vision.

Since 2011, he has continuously worked on his representative series "closed circuit," holding solo and consecutive exhibitions centered on the anonymous public space of the station. From 2012 to 2013, he held "closed circuit, monthly vol.1-vol.12," a series of exhibitions featuring new works every month for a year.

Since 2014, he has presided over "The White," an alternative space based in Tokyo. He actively plans exhibitions and publishes works, releasing his photobooks "closed circuit" (2017) and "substance" (2018) under his own label.

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