Tokyo Camera Style

Unique portraits of Japanese photography fanatics and their gear from the trendsetting Tokyo Camera Style blog

Founded in 2008, John Sypal’s blog, Tokyo Camera Style, has a devoted and passionate international following and has inspired a network of similar blogs worldwide. In street portraits taken on the fly, we see Tokyo’s film-camera enthusiasts posing with their favorite photographic equipment. The images not only catalog the amazing range of cameras used by the most obsessive photography geeks but also offer a glimpse into a street culture where the photograph means everything and the camera takes center stage.

Now, 300 of Sypal’s colorful photographs of weird and wonderful cameras and their creative owners have been gathered together in a one-of-a-kind book. Often taken from above, with the camera owners’ faces out of view, the images show telling details that might otherwise have been missed: the clothes, the jewelry, hands and feet, shoes and socks, customized camera straps, and other photography-related paraphernalia. Beyond the wonderful selection of rare, customized, and vintage analog camera makes, models, and lenses are portraits of the individual personalities who make up the avid street photography scene in Japan.