Yasutaka Kojima - Naka-ima Berlin

Roshin Books 2026

With “Berlin,” Japan-born and Berlin-based photographer Yasutaka Kojima presents the third entry in his series “Naka-ima,” following New York and Tokyo.
Shooting in black and white, Kojima photographed walls, doors and entrances all over the German capital. Flattening the distances of three-dimensional space and ordering visual elements like stairs, pavements, windows, trees, graffiti, flowerpots, ladders, tiles, flaking paint, ramps, metal fences and myriad other objects into eerily pleasant compositions, Kojima aims not only to explore space and its possibilities but also the constraints and deeper meanings of transient time.

“Time, in [the Koshinto concept of Naka-ima], is a circulation of temporal flow, forming a single circle in which beginning and end coexist – an endlessly turning ‘eternal now.’”
― from Yasutaka Kojima’s afterword

“Kojima’s photographic process begins by encountering a place first; the camera comes later. He does not ascribe excessive meaning to individual features such as windows, graffiti or stains on walls. He neither closes in enough to create abstraction nor steps back enough to capture a landscape. Instead, he maintains a transitional distance, facing his subjects with a refreshing sense of clarity that almost erases his own presence. There is a certain elegance and grace to his approach.”
― from Risaku Suzuki’s essay “A transitional distance”

Book Size 270 × 225mm, Pages 88, 79 images

Binding Hardcover, Language English, Japanese