Publisher/平凡社

Google翻訳
"Kowloon Walled City" is a photobook by Japanese photographer Takashi Miyamoto (1947-). Through the demolition of buildings and the transformation of cities, Miyamoto has observed the time and human activities etched into buildings. In the 1980s, he gained attention with "Architectural Apocalypse," and together with this work, he received the 14th Kimura Ihei Award for Photography. This book is a representative work that captures Kowloon Walled City, a massive high-rise slum that once existed on the Kowloon Peninsula in Hong Kong. From 1987 until just before its demolition, Miyamoto visited the site and photographed not only the exterior of the building, which had undergone countless additions and renovations, but also delved deep into its interior, capturing lightless passageways, intricately intertwined pipes and wires, stairs, residences, factories, and shops. The densely packed spaces, where walls are so close together that even the boundaries of the buildings are indistinguishable, appear chaotic, yet they acquire their own unique order through the lives of the people who live there. The book also includes text by Hiroshi Aramata and Kenichi Ohashi, and is structured to interpret the formation and disappearance of the walled city from the perspectives of urban history and cultural history. This photobook documents the final period of a unique urban community that was completely demolished between 1993 and the following year, while simultaneously conveying with overwhelming density the struggle between architecture and life, collapse and creation. Fifth printing.