Greg Girard is one of my favourite photographers all time. His pictures are quite similar to my own in many ways. I also have been shooting these desolate urban landscapes for many years (even before I had ever heard of Girard). But he has been doing it for way longer. Way way longer.
Maybe his main claim to fame is the work he did of Kowloon Walled City in City of Darkness. Stunning body of work that today has huge significance since the entire place has been demolished and the only way to get a feeling of what it looked like back in the day is through pictures.
In JAL 76-88 he explores Tokyo during the boom era in his signature way. He is wandering around in back streets during nights, taking pictures on slide film with tungsten lights that give that cinematic green color cast. The exposure times are long, everything is shot with a tripod. The pacing feels calm, the pictures tell the story like a sort of personal diary. This is a story about Greg himself more than the story of Japan.
What strikes me is how similar all these Tokyo streets look still today. Places that were shot in the late 70s look exactly the same still today. Even people look somewhat similar.
In the middle part of the book there is a segment with some black and white images, and people, movement. This creates a nice change of pace, and something a like night/day feeling, that time progresses in the book world. Then we go back to color pictures taken during daytime and the sun starts to set.
I really love the pictures in this book, I think they resonate especially well with me because I have spent several months in the Tokyo area and I recognize some of the places where the images are taken. But now the bad part - Most of the images are full page spreads and this book is bound in such a way that you cannot really crack it open all the way unless willing to destroy it.
For me, this is a huge problem when it comes to expensive photo books. Either you need to have the type of book that opens up properly (hardcover type sewn binding) or you don’t use full page spreads. The back on this book is glued. I cannot understand how this mistake has gone through the QA process. Didn’t Greg get a copy before they started mass producing these? Did he see this and think, “oh well, good enough”? Even though this is a paperback and not a super exclusive hardcover, it still wasn’t a cheap book..
Oh well, all in all this is a very nice photo book. It is clear that Greg has a massive archive of pictures yet unseen by the general public, and I am sure we will see more of his visual diaries in the future.