About the work

A closer look.

Name one person and one place that belongs to them. The street they grew up on. The door they cannot go back to. The corner where something started. I walk that place slowly through street-level imagery and maps, block by block. Then I write it back as a letter addressed to them: what is still standing, the light, the small things only someone who was there would recognize, and the line I always end with. This is the only thing I do. A letter, not a report. Here is how one opens, from a real walk around Higashikujo, Kyoto: "The lanes around your corner: a brick house with a reed blind over its window, a small nameplate, a kei car tucked nose-in against the wall, a corrugated-steel neighbour a hand's width away. A few minutes from the station, the city is already small and domestic again." Every letter is built from what is actually there. If I cannot see a place well, I say so instead of faking it. First step free: send me the person and the place in two lines and I write the opening paragraph, yours either way. If it lands, I finish within 48 hours, one revision included. Yours to keep or give; your person and your place stay between us if you want. I never invent a place. You are loved.