1st place
gold star award
Alessandro Zanoni
italy
title
Tokyo Night Flight
Suggested print size (longest side)
150 cm / 60 inch
My photo essays - shot in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the ghost districts of Inner Mongolia, Mainland China and Vietnam - investigate the relationship between cities and humans.
In 2016, I was in China for two artist residencies where I made extensive reports on the city of Wuhan, the development of the cities of Inner Mongolia and the slow disappearance of some urban villages in Shenzhen and Shanghai.
With Steve Bisson’s Urbanautica Institute, I published a book entitled The Post-War Dream, a visual journey in black and white across the principal cities of Inner Mongolia. The project is also a comparison between contemporary China and the Second post-world War Italian urban landscape. It has be presented during the 2018 Paris Photo.
In the course of the years, I travelled across several Asian countries due to some magazine reportage and personal projects. I won several international photography prizes, such as Sony World Photography Awards and Lens Culture, to name a few.
My work has been published in numerous online and print publications including Domus, Life Framer, Vice, Fubiz, Divisare, Photography of China, Creative Boom, Camera Infinita, il Fotografo, Style Magazine and many others.
I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows in Milan, Catania, Naples, Paris, and New York. Some of my shots are on sale on the luxury Italian website Artemest.com
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entry description
These shots are part of a great job that I've been carrying out for some years in Japan, focused on the urban landscape, mainly in Tokyo and above all at night. My research is mainly aimed at the more peripheral or less known areas, the anonymous residential areas that all tend to look alike, in infinite modularity that makes it impossible to distinguish one place from another. Other aspects that guide my work in Japan are undoubtedly neon lights, the relationship between men and cars (I developed a sub-project in this regard), places of sexual pleasure (Girls Bar, Love Hotel, Sexy Store, etc. .), and the enormous influence of American culture. The five images that I propose in this mini-series are detached from all of this, mainly for geographical reasons: we are in the heart of Tokyo, not far from the imperial palace and Ginza. They were taken during a night walk - in the grip of jet lag - not far from the hotel where I stayed for a few nights. We find here traditional elements such as red wooden doors or a temple entrance or even more stereotypical elements such as cherry blossoms, all things that are not normally part of my observations. These elements mix with architectural forms, in cold spaces that during the day are populated by millions of hurried office workers or unaware tourists. I intend to expand the research also in this direction, to bring it to the work described above, adding another key to understanding the complexity of the Japanese landscape.Suggested print size (longest side)
150 cm / 60 inch
about the photographer
After attending Art school and a graphic design degree at European Design Institute in Milan, I began my professional graphic designer and art director. Music devourer, have collaborated for over a decade with a rock magazine, and passionate about auteur cinema, I approach photography only in 2014 with a strong passion for urban landscape and architecture. In 2017 I attended the Master in Photography at the European Design Institute in Milan.My photo essays - shot in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the ghost districts of Inner Mongolia, Mainland China and Vietnam - investigate the relationship between cities and humans.
In 2016, I was in China for two artist residencies where I made extensive reports on the city of Wuhan, the development of the cities of Inner Mongolia and the slow disappearance of some urban villages in Shenzhen and Shanghai.
With Steve Bisson’s Urbanautica Institute, I published a book entitled The Post-War Dream, a visual journey in black and white across the principal cities of Inner Mongolia. The project is also a comparison between contemporary China and the Second post-world War Italian urban landscape. It has be presented during the 2018 Paris Photo.
In the course of the years, I travelled across several Asian countries due to some magazine reportage and personal projects. I won several international photography prizes, such as Sony World Photography Awards and Lens Culture, to name a few.
My work has been published in numerous online and print publications including Domus, Life Framer, Vice, Fubiz, Divisare, Photography of China, Creative Boom, Camera Infinita, il Fotografo, Style Magazine and many others.
I’ve exhibited in solo and group shows in Milan, Catania, Naples, Paris, and New York. Some of my shots are on sale on the luxury Italian website Artemest.com
back to gallery