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Introduction

Tokyo Monogatari is a remarkably imaginative narrative that Ilse Leenders submitted to the Viewbook PhotoStory contest last year. It earned her the second jury prize in the conceptual category. This summer the series will be exhibited at Fotosommer Stuttgart 2010. We asked Lauren Heinz, photography critic and editor of FOTO8, to give us her view on the work and talk with Ilse about how it was created.

Incongruous is a word often used to describe the culture of Japan and many photographers have devoted themselves to seeking out these notions of the bizarre and curious within the country. Ilse Leenders’ work flirts with these issues and what it means to photograph Japan yet the resulting imagery is one more concerned with the interplay between modern urban life and tradition, in a performance played out on the streets of Tokyo.
 
Two small children form a line of shiny red apples precariously teetering on the edge of a step. They slowly make their way up, seemingly participating in a well thought out task. The robotic arm movements of a traffic controller are created in a single frame while a metallically draped car sleeps silently on an empty street. An abandoned, overgrown lot is scattered with groupings of empty plastic bottles, appearing as if secretly conversing with each other. In her series of nine images, Leenders manages to both infer and construct the duality of life in Japan – that of duty and the banal. Quiet and unassuming, the photographs take on the form of a monogatari, reciting a lyrical and imaginative narrative.