Amy Sioux’s latest book, Tokyo 35ºN, is a poetic account of the Japanese capital. It’s inspired, in part, by radical French philosopher Guy Debord’s theory of the dérive, a way of moving through the city that puts emotion and chance at the forefront of the way we explore our environment. For Tokyo 35ºN, Ami asked 50 friends to draw her a map of Tokyo that would lead her to a place that was important to them. She would travel there and shoot what she found: cherry blossoms, sure, bustling skyscrapers and reposeful shrines, but also skateparks and shops, restaurants and cafes, quiet residential streets and snatches of moments on public transport.
“I wanted to explore and understand the psychology of Tokyo on a deeper level,” Ami explains. “The books steps beyond the classic foreigner experience and opens up into an intimate side of the city.”
Tokyo 35ºN is infused with a quiet poetry and subtle emotional power; it’s a totally unique snapshot of the city. The images themselves are delicate and intimate, an original and startling portrait of Tokyo.
Shot over three years, between 2013 and 2016, the book also captures the changing seasons and landscapes of the city. We spoke to Ami about inspiration, experience, and surprises that the project brought up, and spotlight a few of her favorite images from the book.

What inspired this whole project? I love the mix of ideas in it: place and photography and poetry — a beautiful take on a city guide.
I was living in Berlin in 2000 and many of my friends were artists and living in warehouses. In order to get to their spaces or parties, a lot of the time you would be handed a hand-drawn map to find your way there. At some point I had many of these maps and I realized that they were kind of like photographs of all of these moments in time. My work up until that point had been deeply influenced by the work of Guy Debord and his theory of the dérive. In the guise of a dérive, one walks through a city moving with no real intention, simply choosing to move by whatever drives you visually, psychologically, or sensually. So I decided to start this project by asking 50 people to draw me a map to a place in Berlin that was important to them for any reason and then I would take the map to navigate myself to the location and take a photograph. I felt like it was kind of like an extension of my portrait work. I photographed the Berlin book in 2000, but the book was never released as I couldn’t find a publisher. Then, with the collaboration of Linda Bjorg Arnadottir, the Reykjavik 64ºN version was born; with 0fr I released Paris 49ºN in 2010.
As for the poetry: Mark Borthwick wrote those words for the introduction of the Tokyo book. He has been a dear friend and inspiration behind my photography work and music and poetry since the very beginnings in the late 90s. I’m beyond honored of the addition of his stunning poem for this edition.

Why did you chose Tokyo for the this project?
Tokyo is a walking city like Paris, which is why I was drawn to photograph it. It was also the experience of again being handed hand-drawn maps that inspired me to continue here. Tokyo is quite a complicated city — even with a written address you sometimes need a drawn map to find your way.
Tokyo is made up of concentric circles and each address is composed of numbers that map groupings of houses and buildings as if seen from above. I found that the longer I discovered Tokyo though photographing this book, my linear western mentality was completely evolving.

What was your experience of Tokyo before you started this? What did making the book reveal to you?
I had come to Tokyo as a young fashion assistant in 1999 working on a shoot for Vogue Japan and had all the Lost in Translation kind of experiences — the parties, the nightlife, the karaoke, the temples. It was all very encapsulated into a very cinematic version, and when I saw Sofia’s film, I completely agreed on many points.
Then as the years went by, I started to come to Japan on my own shootings for Vogue Japan. Again and again, I was brought into this kind of stereotypical experience of Tokyo, but I wanted to go deeper — something drew me in. I returned again and again for shoots over the years, I asked to stay longer and began to shoot this book map by map, living in my own apartments, finding my own way around by myself, buying my own food. I was living in Tokyo, not just visiting. And now the Tokyo I found has become my third home. Via this book, I have found a really strong community of friends who live here.

What was the most surprising, beautiful, or unexpected encounter you had while shooting the images in the book?
One very humid summer afternoon, my friend Hikaru and I went to photograph the Hie Shrine. The cicadas were so loud that day, and the humidity was so strong, we were both overwhelmed by the feeling of energy in the shrine and had to lay down between the gates of the temple and just breathe to try to understand what we were feeling. Tokyo is filled with what many say are “hot spots” or “energy spots” and I think this was definitely one of them.

What do you think is the relationship between insider and outsider, native and tourist, in the project? How do your photos capture that?
There is a definite line between the personal experience of any city when you live there, when you have a native or intimate relationship to a city. I feel that I try to capture what a person has felt while living within a city, to try to express what happens while laying down the lines of personal intimate life between the streets of a city.

Credits
Text Felix Petty
Photography Ami Sioux