Psychedelic Tokyo Captured by Photographer Jean-Vincent Simonet

Dazzled by the bright lights of Tokyo, Swiss photographer Jean-Vincent Simonet has developed a technique for capturing the city that remains faithful to the psychedelic atmosphere of the Japanese capital.

From lit-up signs to smartphones belonging to passers-by as well as lurid billboards, Tokyo by nightfall is in continuous luminous flux. In perpetual motion, the lights never go out, not even for a moment. It is this living and breathing energy that guides the photographer’s work, beginning with the question, how might we take static images that capture the movement of the city in an interesting and atmospheric way?

After visiting Tokyo for the first time Simonet found himself dissatisfied with his first landscape photographs, and ended up experimented with the material form, creating distorted, almost liquid images. He achieves this effect by printing his images on paper covered with plastic wrap so that the ink doesn’t fully permeate and dry. After a few days, he immerses the images in a mixture of water and chemicals which enhances certain colours, reports the British Journal of Photography. On a second trip in 2017 he perfected this technique on the streets of Tokyo.

The name of the project ‘in bloom’ is both a reference to the state of perpetual renaissance of Tokyo, and a nod to the Japanese respect for nature and a tribute to many floral compositions that make up the storefronts of the capital’s shops. The photographer’s work can be found in a 132-page book, available from Self Publish, Be Happy.