From the late 1980’s to 2011, I documented the hundreds of differing taxi firms operating in the city of Tokyo, each with its own distinctive illuminated brand signage.

Some of these taxi firms had as few as just two licensed cars on the road, making the task of cataloguing them very difficult. Today these illuminated designs are all but a memory, as the four big companies have bought out the smaller ones for their operators licence. Now most of these companies and their unique lights have disappeared into the big firms standard design.

All photographed on a Hasselblad 6x6cm camera loaded with transparency film, shot handheld from the saddle of a push bike as I hunted around the city looking for the rarest of company designs. As with all my work, they are presented here for you ‘as shot’ without the use of any post production, digital or traditional.

A collection of these works were published in a book titled 'Tokyo Taxi' in March 2012 by Merrell Publishers, with 200 colour illustrations across 224 pages. ISBN: 978-1-8589-4569-9.

Each piece from the collection has been hand printed by the artist in an edition of 10 prints, all are signed, dated & annotated between 2004 and 2011.

Paper size: 23.6 x 16.5 inches / 60 x 42 cms.
Initialed, dated, annotated & numbered (recto) in a museum mylar sleeve. Image size on sheet varies from square, landscape or portrait depending on the image format.

Provenance:
Book publication 'Tokyo Taxi' by Merrell, 2012. ISBN: 978-1-8589-4569-9.
Exhibition 'Tokyo Taxi' 2011, Ann330 Gallery, Los Angeles.
Sold direct from the artists studio, recorded in Catalogue Raisonné.

view the entire Tokyo Taxi collection on the artists Distil Ennui website.