Bruno Quinquet sends us his series “〒YUBIN” and presents it as follows:
“〒 YUBIN” is a collection of urban scenes from Tokyo, observed from the standpoint of a postal worker on their delivery round. The 〒 sign, known as “yubin mark”, is the symbol of the postal service (yubin) and zip code in Japan.
The idea of emulating a postal worker’s eye on the city arose from my desire to renew my perspective on Tokyo—a place I have photographed since moving here in 2005. While some mailboxes are in plain sight, others are to be discovered. They come in a variety of models, depending—or not—on the architectural style and the age of the building. Occasionally, unique orunusual arrangements arise. It occured to me that documenting these micro- landscapes, significant to postal workers, was a way to witness the urban and social fabric in the making. Also, mailboxes generally sit at the confines of private and public spaces, a blurred frontier that I have been playing with since my early days as a street photographer.
“〒 YUBIN” is being published as a series of postcard books, each one covering a different borough of the metropolis. The choice of format is a poetic and conceptual invitation to send photos of landscapes-with-mailbox through the postal distribution system. Since most people who acquire the work keep the postcard book as a slightly conceptual, collectible photobook, I include an extra postcard in the package to encourage participation in a postcard swap. This side project, called “〒 YUBIN Round Trip,” is a growing archive of our exchanges.
Bruno Quinquet
Bruno Quinquet, born in 1964 in France, moved to Japan in 2005 and studied photography at Tokyo Visual Arts.
Under the moniker Bureau d’Etudes Japonaises, he offers a contemplative and deadpan vision of the metropolis, grounded in the surrealistic, modernist and conceptual influences of his European cultural heritage.
His first body of work, the “salaryman project”, featured in Thames and Hudson’s 2010 publication Street Photography Now.
For more images and information about the project, visit: https://www.brunoquinquet.com/en/yubin_en.html
