Bookshelves are more than they appear; they are thresholds to knowledge, memory, and imagination. Each bookshelf, shaped by its owner’s personal journey, acts as a silent witness to intellectual and emotional landscapes while connecting individual stories to shared cultural narratives. Takashi Tachibana described bookshelves as “cross-sections of intellectual history,” while Edogawa Rampo’s collection evokes the puzzles of his narratives. Even a modest bookshelf in a nameless villa can stir forgotten childhood memories, revealing how bookshelves intertwine past and present.
My process involves deconstructing bookshelves shelf by shelf, photographing each layer from a single perspective to preserve the legibility of every book spine. These layers are then reconstructed into multi-perspective compositions, reflecting the layered essence of bookshelves. For example, Hitoshi Suzuki’s circular atelier, Shunkyo, designed like a colosseum, naturally guided the gaze with its unique layout, where bookshelves encapsulated a universe of ideas. Similarly, Ōya Shobō, a historic antiquarian bookstore in Jinbōchō, presented its own challenges. The narrow aisles and handwritten slips on traditional Japanese books required a multi-perspective approach to capture both the store’s layered atmosphere and the intricate mosaic of calligraphy.
Through this method, I reveal bookshelves not as static structures but as dynamic archives of memory, imagination, and
