For this project, I shot around Shinjuku Station — the busiest business and shopping area in Tokyo. However, in my images, the pedestrians on the sidewalks and crosswalks appear strangely frozen in the middle of their action while they are moving their feet one step forward toward their destinations.

Some are captured while holding umbrellas, some are frozen while conversing with others or talking on cell phones, and some are caught while running hurriedly with long strides - all of these actions are momentarily paused. Along with beaming sunlight and dark shadows cast on the ground, the scenes appear surreal, fictitious, and curiously soundless, even though the actual location is filled with the sounds of traffic and crowds.

In my sequential series, “Scramble Crossing”, I experiment with the consecutive shooting of people at a scramble crossing. During the brief period of time when the traffic signal changes from green to red, I capture various types of pedestrians as well as vehicles crossing in opposite directions. These paused frames and sequential images reveal interesting “raw” expressions of people in their facial and body language that they are not normally conscious of. On the scramble, each person seems to tell their own personal story, even though they appear frozen in time.