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Mike Nogami’s photobook “Blue” consists of about 190 images shot between 1968, shortly before the formation of legendary folk-rock band Happy End, and 1972, when the band broke up.
Nogami’s images not only show musicians like Haruomi Hosono and Takashi Matsumoto before they became music stars but also offer a striking, nostalgic time capsule of early 1970s Tokyo, with shots of Nihonbashi, an unpopulated Omotesando, the long-gone Tokyu Cultural Center in Shibuya (now replaced by the Hikarie building).

“The photographs are full of life, but in what must have been a noisy, noisy world, Mike seems to have sought out fleeting images of Silence.” — from Michael K. Bourdagh’s foreword

“From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Mike Nogami was the only person who photographed me and my comrades. Not only can this series be considered a document of this time, it is also a beautiful photobook that I’d like on my bookshelf” — Haruomi Hosono