From the narrow alleyways of the Golden Gai to the flashing ads and
jumbotrons of the Shibuya
street crossings to the skyscrapers of
Shinjuku and the cartoon billboards of the Akiba, Tokyo is an intensely
visual and mesmerizing city. In the most innovative account of Tokyo’s
urban sensations since Roland Barthes’ Empire of Signs, Stephen Barber in Tokyo Vertigo
probes the many ways in which Tokyo projects and hides itself, focusing
upon its filmic, photographic, and media cultures as well as its
extraordinary urban history of destruction and reconfiguration. Dividing his analysis into three parts, Barber first interrogates
the disparate urban zones of Tokyo, from the districts of Shinjuku and
Shibuya to the desolate peripheries where the megalopolis falls apart.
He then examines Tokyo’s sexual and media cultures, through which the
city’s compulsive fascinations and obsessions exert their power.
Finally, he looks at the ways in which European culture collides with
Tokyo’s urban formations, often generating unprecedented hybrid images
and texts. An anti-guidebook that intimately reveals the visual culture of this city in constant flux, Tokyo Vertigo includes
original photographs by Romain Slocombe and a range of photographic
art-works from the 1950s to the 2010s that exemplify the intensity and
spectacle of the city.
By:
Stephen Barber Imprint: Solar Books Country of Publication: United States Edition: 1 Dimensions:
Height: 210mm,
Width: 210mm,
Spine: 8mm
Weight: 264g ISBN:9780983248026 ISBN 10: 0983248028 Pages: 120 Publication Date:15 November 2011 Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format:Paperback Publisher's Status: Active
Stephen Barber is a maverick cultural historian and the author of more than twenty books, including Hijikata: Revolt of the Body, also published by Solar Books. He currently lives in Berlin.