Tokyo 東京 and one picture of Mt. Fuji

"Finally, Martin brings us to Japan, with a very fine emphasis on Tokyo, but also the obligatory photograph of Mt. Fuji, appropriately and hilariously titled on the cover of his book “Tokyo and one Picture of Mt. Fuji”. Here, the chaos of the Middle East is traded for the obsessive orderliness of Japanese culture. Certain known cultural signifiers re-align my imagination to the Far East. Visions of progressive industrial culture as seen through the worship of the automobile, the cosmic notion that Japan is better photographed at night as seen through the culture of its own photography. Within the work I spy the the ancient totems of a Japan always resisting its roots for its futures and vice-versa-I see old rickety wooden houses, small in nature, yet impervious to earthquakes stacked in the back courtyards of newer “Neat and Clean” apartment complexes. The Japanese compulsion to order is often seen as a duplicitous façade for the repression of its post-war collective traumas and the innate shelving of emotion and I see this in Martin’s images. Garages that can barely contain their vehicles-ever so perfect the spacing, the cosmetic gardening and the way in which power lines nestle in between trees perfectly yearning for natural chaos." Brad Feuerhelm for American Suburb X