Tokyo Wild Cats╱Hana Takeda
A cat gives the eye a reason to pause. In Hana Takeda’s photographs, that pause extends to the street around it: the entrance to a shop, the edge of a building, a patch of light among things left in everyday use.
Published in 1996, Tokyo Wild Cats belongs to a practice that had long moved between cats and streets. Her earlier street work, Nemusō na Machi, had brought her the Kimura Ihei Photography Award. Here, the built surroundings remain as absorbing as the animal within them.
Takeda recalled taking trains to places where she might find cats and walking long distances, content even when she returned without a photograph. That openness to an encounter carries into the pictures. The camera gives us time to look at the cats and the places they inhabit.
There is affection and humour here, alongside an occasional sense of unease. Strong light and deep shadow give familiar surroundings an unexpected presence. The photographs invite us to consider how a city built by people is also inhabited by animals following their own routes.
猫
武田花╱Hana Takeda
CHUOKORON-SHA╱1996╱approx. 21 × 26 cm╱Unpaginated╱Monochrome
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