With this first book, Roberto Badin shows us a Japan far removed from the clichés usually associated with the Land of the Rising Sun. With delicate touches, he sublimates the fleeting moments that emerge in the banality of everyday life.
By capturing moments of solitude, emptiness and peace, he reveals the intimate nature of a country.
The perfect mastery of framing and lighting is the result of meticulous planning. As is the choice of colours and the moments captured.

The images feature a play of straight, oblique and vertical lines. They are all vanishing lines that direct the eye. Sometimes there is a curve, like the edge of a pond, a power line or the moon floating over a sleeping city.

Seeing through the lines and beyond could be the subtitle of this book, whose clean, graphic images pay tribute to Japanese aesthetics. I found similarities with the art of ikebana, where emptiness, in space and within oneself, is essential to creating the right floral arrangement. In both cases, it is the form that gives meaning to the content.

For the author, "it is a calm, silent and solitary country, far from the usual cliché of the crowds in Shibuya. My fascination with Japan lies in the way the Japanese look at themselves. There's a distance between people. That's what I wanted to convey.
What emerges from these magnificent images is a feeling of serenity and strength that you take with you as you close the book.

Text: Brigitte Postel
Photos: Roberto Badin

Inside Japan
Roberto Badin
116 pages
81 photographs
Publisher: Benjamin Blanck
Price: 39.95?

by Travel Universe
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