Maki: (A) Japan Somewhere – AMERICAN SUBURB X

Maki’s images in Japan Somewhere (Zen Foto Gallery), produced over a fourteen-year period feel anxious and compressed. Though specific to one country, the Frenchman’s images feel anything but declarative. They feel ambulatory, intrepid,  and often chaotic as if shot in a constant state of momentum and high velocity. The frames are heavily compressed with the comings and goings of Janese street life cum theater. Occasionally you catch a grainy view of the sky overhead as birds pass in a state of flight, compressed into the frame like a vinyl decal on a store window-they almost feel as unreal as the street from which Maki makes his photographs.