The ongoing Salaryman Project depicts the world of Tokyo’s male office workers and the Japanese sense of the season through a mix of street photography and conceptual documentary.
As a person who never worked in an office, I tend to find exoticism in the figure of the white- collar workers that populate the Japanese capital. Since all photos are candid, I obscure the faces on purpose to protect people’s privacy. Anonymity is not a social comment on these men, but a reaction to the current state of snapshot photography. However, this limitation turns into a playful, exciting challenge, and anonymity seems to let mystery and poetry blossom around the corporate world.
The work is published as an illustrated Japanese professional agenda, connecting office work and the seasons in a functional object. This yearly format forces me to work on deadlines but at the same time, to happily accept obsolescence as the fate –or strength- of publication and photography.
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About the Artist
Bruno Quinquet [France, b. 1964] worked as a recording engineer in France for 20 years before working in photography in Japan in 2006. He graduated from the Tokyo Visual Arts photography department, and was granted an artist visa. He lived in Tokyo and established the Bureau d’Etudes Japonaises.
His solo exhibitions in Tokyo included “Salaryman Project” Visual Arts Gallery (2009); “2LDK” Visual Arts Gallery (2010); “Business × Nature” Hibiya Patio (2011); “Salaryman Project” Atsukobarouh Gallery (2013), and “Eclipse” installation, Yebiso International Festival for Art & Alternative Vision (2014).
He has also exhibited in group exhibitions at “The Pursuit of Happiness” Noorderlicht Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands (2009); “Right here, right now” Format Festival, Derby, UK (2011); “Foreign-Familiar / Das Vertraute im Fremden” Goethe Institute, Bangkok (2011); “Inside Out, reflections on the public and the private”, London Festival of Photography (2012); Yangon Photo Festival, Myanmar (2013) and “Visual Communication”, Tsukuba Museum, Japan (2013).