When Sohei Nishino steps into a new city, he starts photographing from the highest point then walks the streets, sometimes for months, shooting hundreds of rolls of film. After he develops them by hand, he pieces them together to create a composite map of the city, though not as a representation of geographical scale. Nishino’s maps exist as a visual travel journal, with images taken from different angles and with different scales to convey his individual experience through a city. His movement through streets constructs the topographical image of memory and of a path chosen intuitively, not guided by a city’s typical attractions. A contemporary map-maker, Nishino takes inspiration from Japanese Cartographer Ino Tadataka, who surveyed and mapped the coastline of Japan in the 18th century.
