Alone

Walking around Tokyo – Urban Visions The project, made during 2018, remains almost entirely unpublished to date since the spread of the pandemic has hindered its public display. The photographs in the exhibition show the Japanese capital and its inhabitants, highlighting both the aesthetics of the place and the controversial social issues. So, on the one hand we see the imposing architectures, geometric urban motifs, roaring colours, artificial lights of the night, underground and lifts as means of mass transportation; on the other hand, we can read the incessant rhythm of work and the loneliness of the individual in large metropolises, the lack of offline communication compensated by online communication and, again, the alienation that characterises the anonymous crowds of passers-by. The selection of shots belongs to a macro-project, which in turn is grouped into a series of categories: Alone, Subway, People and Lift. Each series explores a theme and triggers a human reflection. When we look at the individual photographs, what stands out is the individuality of the subject. Mimmi Moretti tries to extract the personality and, consequently, the stories of the characters he meets. It doesn't really matter where they were going or what they were really doing when he took the photos, what counts is the imagery that emerges and the possibility of being able to tell an infinite number of stories with a single image. The images reveal the urban and social dimensions of the Asian megacities. Japanese society is analysed and what results are the mechanical movements of the crowd on the streets or in the metropolitan subways. The traffic is not very disturbing because we are talking about structured dynamic crowds. Getting very nearly a surreal dimension, the everyday scenes are captured with a sort of cinematographic aesthetic which, especially in the night shots, evokes the first Blade Runner and the dystopian novels of the early twentieth century.