shashasha

For Jun Abe, 1995 was the year he started teaching photography at the Visual Arts College Osaka, teaching his students and going on shoots in the city together with them. The photographs in his book “1995”, all taken during that year, vividly capture the atmosphere on Osaka’s streets during that time. The neutrality and seeming ubiquity of Abe’s camera extracts from the unfolding confusion of everyday life those few rare moments that hint at deeper emotions, stories or sentiments.

“Looking back at those photos, I notice that many of them could be classified as so-called streetsnaps. I think it is because I was once again trying to return to my roots, to the time I first started taking photographs.
Reading through the photobook now, those days come back to me vividly.
Whenever I went into the city, the abundant excitement almost stunned me.
One thing after the other captured my interest. I simply couldn’t catch my breath.
I remember needing time to cool down whenever I got back home after a day of shooting.”
― from Jun Abe’s statement (translation by shashasha)