Alongside veteran photographer Q. Sakamaki, Tokyo-based photographer AKO (@akolonic_) co-founded @everydayjapan, a collective whose members expose the reality behind day-to-day life in the country. Their photography covers difficult, and often underrepresented, societal issues. With a background in graphic design, and as the sole non-journalist in the collective, AKO takes a spontaneous approach to her photography. “I would never go out on the weekend looking to take photos deliberately for Instagram,” she says. “I’d rather just capture a slice of my daily life. If I’m photographing a flower, I wouldn’t buy one, take it back home and display it carefully. I’d just snap a flower that happened to be in the street.”
She’s currently on a mission to showcase a version of Japan that is free of oversimplified preconceptions — it’s part of “Unseen Everyday Japan,” an exhibit currently at the Japan Foundation in Sydney, Australia.
Photo by @akolonic_