Kozyndan

The making of Kuhaku, the chapter
(photos to illustrations)

(If you know this woman, please contact us.)

On some of the hottest days of the summer of 2003, I found myself sweating in a tank top, side-stepping and snapping photos of a small shopping street just outside the center of Tokyo. People looked at me strangely. Old men grunted. Old ladies tried to pretend I wasn't there. But I was -- sweating and snapping my way along the kilometer-long strip of shops.

I tried to imagine what shopkeepers, peering out of their windows at me, were thinking. But it was too hot. And I too dehydrated. I felt my blood turn to poison and then back to blood again. All in the name of a godforsaken chapter in this godforsaken book, I thought to myself. I'm going to die here, in front of a schoolgirl yelling "Beckham!"

Actually, it wasn't that bad. It was hot, but it felt good, and I was possessed by the passion that comes with working on a creative project. We had spoken with kozyndan, and they had agreed to help us turn the street into something fun and interesting for the book. Knowing that they were involved certainly helped me return to the street five or six times to photograph and plan, plan and photograph, over and over. (There are some planning images from my notebooks in the design notes section of the blog.)

In all, I must have taken four- or five-hundred images. I then spent a good part of a week looking for interesting portions and stitching them together. Below are the five panoramics that made it into the book. They are in sets of two, the original photos provided to kozyndan on top, and the final illustrations on the bottom.

-- Craig Mod

Contents


Links

  • Buy limited edition prints, (super reasonably priced) posters and check out more artwork on their homepage at www.kozyndan.com

Shimotakaido, a shotengai for the ages

















Shooting the photos for the above image was pretty fun actually. If you notice, the main budiling in the image is a police box (mini-police station). By chance, as I was going by and photographing (a fairly slow process since I was taking several shots every 10 feet or so), the police had just arrested someone.

I didn't notice at first but the man in the box started screaming and waving his arms at me. He eventually dove under the desk. The police just laughed and I continued down the street. If you look at the images closely, even in the illustration kozyndan managed to capture the guy pretty well.