shashasha

This second photobook by Japan-based Union Magazine is devoted to a new series by Japanese photographer Reiko Toyama. Following the first Union Magazine photobook’s focus on Los Angeles, Toyama was asked to shoot her photographs in London.

It was Toyama’s first time to visit the city. After the Corona pandemic and the resulting traveling restrictions had made it difficult to travel, Toyama finally arrived in London in September 2022 – the month Queen Elizabeth II passed away. London was shrouded in grief and covered in memorabilia. Within this historical coincidence, Toyama captured a book’s worth of impressions and moments from London’s streets, focusing on the people of the city rather than the city itself. With warm, almost nostalgic colors, “September in London” records the beauty of ordinary London life at a special moment in time.

“It was my first time to go to that place, with those people and that light. Maybe it was because I was present at this historic moment of the passing of the Queen, but I had the strange feeling of stepping back in time. I was looking at the world while recalling classic documentaries and street photography.”
― from Reiko Toyama’s afterword