Photo walk with Lee Chapman

Japan is a complex system of masks. In Tokyo hidden behind the glassy façade of contemporary architecture, punctual trains and always busy business people, there is an older, run-down city where mostly unseen people who have been left behind and are on the brink of homelessness find shelter.
Right next to the city rushing towards the future, hidden in plain sight, is a latent vacancy, abandoned family homes, deserted hairdressing salons and grandmother's stores whose owners have long since or only recently passed away.
One only realizes that this city and its inhabitants wear masks and that there are layers behind layers after spending a lot of time in and with it.
Lee Chapman, photographer and documentarian of this “other” and yet perhaps more real Japan, took me on a tour, guiding me through a slow Tokyo that has somehow fallen out of time and yet exists precariously on the edge of vanishing.
These photos are the testimony of a long walk with Lee, who shared the stories from the neighborhood with me. These were old, almost illegible, long-dead life stories stuck on the facades of waiting to be torn down homes.