play of light and the life of plants between the buildings in Tokyo

The structure of Tokyo is amazing. There are wide through streets, which enclose neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are crossed by narrower streets, which mark even smaller areas within which the houses are close together. A comparison with a blood vessel system, from arteries to capillaries, comes to mind.

A fire department regulation in Japan states that the houses must always keep a certain distance from the boundary of the plot. As a result, there are no closed facades and one can always catch a glimpse of what is behind them between the buildings. During the first visit to Japan in 2015, these residual spaces between the houses attract attention. They are minuscule strips where (almost) no control is exercised on the environment. Sometimes, in passing, something special seems to be visible, but at a second glance it is gone, like a fleeting sensation that evaporates immediately after registration. Studying the place yields nothing, some earth, a few tiles and miserable bushes that try manfully to reach the daylight above, but barely get off the ground.

Everything changes, however, when dusk falls. Windows look out onto the spaces in between; not for the view, but to let light in. When the lights are turned on in the evening, a wonderful play of light is created in these spaces that radiates outwards and reflects back and forth against the walls like a pinball machine of light. Photographing this seems too obvious and the phenomenon must have been exhaustively documented, but a year of searching yields nothing. This creates the need to return and record these spaces after sunset myself.