Bruno Labarbere
Mizuwari
Posted by Hemeria, 2023
Size: 24 x 17 cm
Pages 54
Softcover
How can we tell the story of a country and even more so a city as fantasized as Tokyo, if not by getting up close and personal with those who live there? Bruno Labarbère offers a wandering in deep blacks in the streets and alleys of the capital of Japan, at the whim of his encounters and to the rhythm of the mizuwari.
By photographing street scenes and episodes of daily life, he captured the extraordinary banality and ordinary singularity of a country that does not hesitate to mix genres and its alcohols with water. Thus, whisky, sake, shochû and umeshu can be served mizuwari. A typically Japanese method of prolonging drunkenness and diluting an often heavy daily life, by multiplying the nomikai, "drinking meetings" organized between colleagues of the same company, these emblematic salarymen of the Archipelago.
A true immersion into Japanese society, this work offers a snapshot of what is most typical about it.