Photographer Anne Murat is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Tokyo Solo’. To see Anne’s body of work, click on any image.

Tokyo is the most populated metropolis in the world. Both a secular and futuristic city, it is the economic, commercial and financial capital, the headquarters of excessiveness: 37 million inhabitants, i.e. more than 6,000 inhabitants / km2, nearly 300 subway stations and 3 billion annual users, 50,000 taxis … A city full of numbers and paradoxes.

Everything goes fast in the city; everyone gets excited like in a gigantic particle accelerator. Crowd, hordes, masses, flow: a continuous current in perpetual motion. But when looking at this big bang enthropy with the distance of time, and inner steadiness, the city reveals a poignant loneliness, both particular and general. The excessive use of smartphones conceal it. Tokyo is a city of unconnected atoms of shadows and ghosts.

A post-modern holy trinity reigns in Tokyo: hyper-individualism, hyper-consumerism, hyper-connectivity. These photos underline the anonymity, the loss of benchmarks and the lack of communication that prevails. But it is precisely at this nonsensical point when one needs to pay for petting a cat or to rent a friend, that we can grasp the sense of what defines our lives, our relationships, and the lifetime given to us. The presence with the self, the other, and with the world.

All images and text © Anne Murat