Japan Works ─ Aglaia Konrad

A photobook tracing Aglaia Konrad’s sustained engagement with architecture and the city through postwar Metabolist structures and anonymous buildings across Japan.

Japan Works is a photobook by Austrian artist Aglaia Konrad, based in Belgium. While architecture and the urban environment have always appeared consistently in Konrad’s photographic work, what she ultimately investigates are the social, cultural, economic, political and historical forces that shape those built forms. Produced during a one-month stay in Japan in 2019, this publication brings together photographs of postwar Metabolist architecture in cities such as Tokyo, Itoigawa, Kyoto, Nagoya and Osaka, alongside numerous anonymous buildings that contribute just as powerfully to the distinct texture of the Japanese urban landscape.

By combining iconic monochrome photographs printed full-bleed with colour contact-sheet pages that can also be read as a record of the journey itself, the book achieves a surprisingly light rhythm despite its massive scale of nearly five hundred pages. Created in close collaboration with Konrad’s long-time publisher, Japan Works stands as a summative volume within her practice.

Related article
Reading Photobooks: Japan Works
by Yukihito Kono

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Title: Japan Works
Artist: Aglaia Konrad
Publisher: Roma Publications, 2021
Format: Softcover with flaps, Otabind
Size: 260 × 202 × 30 mm
Pages: 496
Language: English
Edition: First edition
ISBN: 9789492811912