Photo Book Review: Toy Tokyo

Admittedly, toy cameras were never designed to produce the professional quality crystal clear, razor sharp images we so often strive to create. They are simply toys but because of their unique nature they do have a lot more to offer than one might suspect. They are amazingly good at producing wonderfully blurry, strangely distorted images marked with the odd streak of light but—for some photographers—these aren’t unwanted or undesirable traits at all. These quirks add an entirely new dimension of creativity to their work.

Toy Tokyo features a fine collection of photographs (and interviews) from some of today’s most iconic toy camera/cult photographers such as: Frederic LeBain, Takeshi Suga, Cory Lum, Taiju Fubuki, Yusuke Abico, Paolo Patrizi, Sean Lotman and Michael Lyons. Artists who are devoted to the use toy cameras as a means of self-expression and those who experiment with them as a diversion from their usual, more traditional, photographic style. This is the first in a series of location specific books utilizing these toys for travel photography. Toy Tokyo offers the reader a fun, fresh (and slightly warped) vision of the beautiful sights of Japan as seen through the lens of a toy camera.

Toy Tokyo; by Manami Okazaki, Kingyo Books, $30; (ISBN: 978-9-8812-5078-0)

More info on Kingyo Press here.

X