Osaka Romantics follows a single day in Osaka — soft dusk light giving way to neon, deep night thinning into a quiet morning — sequenced by photographer omi kim so that reaching the last page feels closer to finishing a film than closing a book.
About This Book
omi kim came to photography sideways. Working as a designer and leather craftsman under the brand crambox creating, he first picked up a camera to document bags and wallets, chasing the fine differences in texture under the fingertips and the shadows thrown by the angle of light. That attention eventually turned outward, onto the streets of the city he works in. What he found there, and what this book collects, are fragments of what he calls nameless stories — moments in a city changing minute by minute, in which something beyond the plain facts of the scene is briefly legible. He cuts those fragments out and layers his own feeling over them. The result is Osaka at night as a continuous, cinematic arc rather than a set of images.
Key Features
- Photographs by omi kim, designer, craftsman and photographer based in Osaka
- Sequenced as a single continuous day, from dusk through neon and deep night to morning
- Rain-slicked streets, reflections and neon — the register that made omi kim's urban night photography widely followed
- Published by Geijutsu Shinbunsha, Tokyo
What You'll Discover
- How a craftsman's habit of reading texture and raking light transfers from a workbench to a city street at night
- The moment of shift change in an Osaka evening, when people heading home cross those heading out
- Reflection used structurally rather than decoratively — wet asphalt and glass doubling the neon into something closer to fiction
- What it means to sequence a photobook as a film, and what the ending does to everything before it
About the Author
omi kim is a designer, craftsman and photographer based in Osaka. He has worked in the design and production of leather goods for over ten years, founding his brand crambox creating in 2010. Photography began as a way to document that work and became a practice of its own.
Specifications
- ISBN: 9784875867593
- Publisher: Geijutsu Shinbunsha
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions: 25.8 × 18.5 cm
- Language: English and Japanese
Perfect For: Photographers working at night or in cities, readers drawn to contemporary Japanese photobooks, and anyone who has spent an evening in Osaka and wanted it held still.