BACK TO THE STREETS
書店外里帰り

About the exhibition

Back to the Streets delves into the dying world of Tokyo's shotengai, Japanese traditional retail shopping streets. As Tokyo develops, the city's youth and youth culture have centered their shopping in two major districts: Shibuya and Harajuku’s shotengai. The outskirts of Tokyo's older traditional shopping streets like Sugamo are populated by senior citizens and largely ignored by the city's youth.

Yee breathes new life into Sugamo's famous traditional shopping streets through a series of portraits that preserve the shotengai's individual sense of community while infusing it with youth culture and fashion. Yee refocuses attention on shotengais by uniting the two disparate communities. In a playful juxtoposition of clashing but compatible cultures, Toyo's silver generation mingles with the Cosplay, Goth-lolita youth generation.

Back to the Streets is held at Nakaochiai Gallery, a former noodle shop on a dead shotengai. Generations collide and connect in the BACK TO THE STREETS photography series.

The extreme difference between "Ura and Omote" (the surface and what lies beneath) is what continues to influence much of her work. The organized and clinical approach of much of Japanese society contrasts with what she calls, "the city's crazy underworld culture and landscape".

This was her first solo exhibition. Held at Nakaochiai Gallery, Tokyo, Japan