BUSINESSMAN IN TOKIO

Tokyo is one of the biggest metropolises in the world, and probably the metropolis with the largest number of “businessman” per square meter. Businessmen, dressed in their elegant suits and ties, fill the streets of Tokyo’s main business districts such as Shinjuku, Shiodome, and Roppongi Hills, among many others.

©Tina Bagué/Akashi Photos

The picture I show you here was taken in the vibrant neighborhood of Shinjuku after a working day. It was about eight o’clock at night, on a pedestrian crossing of a wide avenue. On the median strip on the wide avenue, there was a small orange traffic light, at the height of my waist. There I placed my camera, at that time a small Konica Hexar with fixed lenses, as if the traffic light were a tripod. I had negative color film on the camera.

I took several photographs of the busy traffic and the neon lights glittering over Shinjuku district. And here came a Japanese businessman in suit. He tried to cross the wide avenue, but busy traffics impeded him from reaching to the other side. Finding himself trapped on the median strip, just in front of me, he decided to light a cigarette. And the flashing orange traffic light illuminated him completely under the glittering neon lights of Shinjuku, creating a unique special scene as if it were a movie setting. I quietly released the shutter. This is how this picture was taken.

This could be one of those decisive moments in which everything came together to create a picture: a good light, a good subject, a good action and a good composition, in front of my little camera!

And this is how the spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya used this photograph to open a story on Tokyo!