After New York New York, Dutch-Argentinian photographer Richard Koek announces the release of his photography book Tokyo Tokyo, available April 30. In the title, the repetition of the city’s name is already meant to be a first clue to what his shots will reveal. Koek looks for the dualism that every city holds in its essence. In the case of Tokyo, tradition on the one hand and extreme contemporaneity on the other. Clichés collapse and make way for the real daily life of the inhabitants of the Japanese capital, but capturing it was not easy.

«I did not realise it was quite an impossible task to fulfil,» Koek explains in an interview with Creative Boom. «Tokyo cannot be captured in one book, it has 40,000,000 citizens and is way more spread out than New York City. I did find a way that somehow made sense for a book, and I hope I succeeded in capturing it». Without a doubt, Koek reveals a curious side of the city, highlighting the stark contrast that characterizes the Edochian universe. Let’s find out through some of the shots shown in the preview.

What Richard Koek points out is that Tokyo Tokyo is everything you do not expect from this city. As a tourist, as an outsider, when you leave for Tokyo you have a very clear idea of what to expect, provided mainly by the images propagated by the media, but when you come back this idea is overturned. «My book will show two sides of the city; the beauty in centuries-old traditions, as well as the beauty in daily life of the moment that we all live,» Koek explains again to Creative Boom. Indeed, another aspect that emerges is the rapid evolution of the city, which, while jealously preserving traditions, is also constantly changing, both from an architectural point of view – new buildings are constantly springing up – and from a socio-cultural point of view.

Courtesy Richard Koek