Leica Gallery Exhibition: Tokyo Untitled and The Last Neighborhood Standing

It’s a hot afternoon in Tokyo, and you’re alone in an empty factory. Blackness spreads inky and thick. But the factory door is only partially closed; and through the opening on the bottom, between door and ground, you see a horizontal sliver of sunlight. From where you are inside, you hear the uneven clicking of heels reverberating on cement, blending with the lofty laughter of women. You imagine the lines on their painted lips but catch only their bare legs, flitting across the horizontal opening. You count five pairs of slim ankles dipping into dainty heels. The hem of a black dress flutters around one woman’s legs. Then she, and they, are gone.

Even in the aftermath, you grasp onto the glimpse…

This is how you feel when facing D’Agostin’s snapshots of Tokyo. Darkness dominates most images, but it is this obscurity that drives us to imagine what is hidden from plain sight while gazing all the more intently at what is revealed. The corner of a striped tie, a man’s silhouette projected on bricks, grainy lights.

For the most part, D’Agostin trains his lens on geometric structures of the city. The architecture and space between buildings, the interesting angles and streets.

Alessandro Zuek Simonetti focuses less on the architectural arrangement in Chinatown, committing instead to the faces of the community. His is a more intimate point-of-view, one that is fixated on profiles and expressions, scratches on an elbow and craters on a cheek.

Both Italian photographers’ exhibitions are supported by Leica Gallery and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York.