Thread: Japan’s Underground Photography

A enormous underground tunnel that runs through 40metres under the Hibiya Junction Tokyo or an underground dome that lies 500metres below deep in the mountains of Gunma…? In Japan unimaginably large spaces underneath our ground level lives exist. Even beyond the high walls of nuclear power stations, incineration plants or energy research organizations futuristic cities that we thought only to exist in science fiction movies unfold - not far from your neighbourhood. I talked to Joe Nishizawa who photographed such hyper-surreal dimensions in Japan and just published a book Deep Inside.

Written by Kaori Nishida
All images © JOE NISHIZAWA

Nishizawa-san, flipping through the pages of your book “Deep Inside” one gets sucked into this technical-magic-wonderland. I can’t believe that those places actually look like that - better than any CG setting I have ever


seen. Bladerunner would simply be jeallous! Even the lighting is perfect in pink and green!

Oh no, absolutely no computer graphics involved in these photos. That’s essentially what those places look like - for example one right below Hibiya Junction.

Lightings and everything is just captured as it was there - I didn’t even use a flash light! It’s magic: you first hear the car noises on the ground level and as you descend slowly, suddenly, this vast and silent space unfolds in front of you.



In the book, there are also some photos of nuclear power stations!!? What security provisions did you have to make?

In order to shoot this place, I wore three-layer protective and the camera was wrapped around with plastic and tapes. Also I was told that “this power station has to stop for a full month” - in case I accidentally dropped camera. This totally freaked me out, so I had to put an extra camera strap around my neck, attach the camera firmly to the tripod leaning extra cautiously over the fence with the PR personnel from the power station holding my legs tight… Also for security reasons, there were many parts and bits that could not be photographed. I had to ask the PR personnel to check my photos from every new angle.




I also want people to know that such a superb top-of-the world technology exists in Japan. These enormous objects and constructions are almost sealed, locked up as a restricted area which ordinary people like us have no access to. Chances to ever get a glimpse of it are so rare, that I almost consider it as my duty to make full use of photography as a medium to visually introduce the country’s pride in technologies to people - not only internationally, but simply to Japanese citizens, who have no idea of what lies beneath their feet.



More picture : http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/07/24/japan-und...nd-photography/

Kind of old new but IMPRESSIVE