PLAYED

Yoshi Kametani
PLAYED

Photographs: Yoshi Kametani

Text: Yoshi Kametani

Publisher: Editions du Lic

64 pages

Pictures: 44

Year: 2016

ISBN: 9788293341154

Comments: Soft cover, 22.0 cm x 33.0 cm. Played comes loose bound in a protective PVC dust jacket with a saddle sewn booklet held in place with an elastic cord. Some small dents and traces of fingers on the pages.

Played represents the first solo project by Yoshi Kametani following his recent successful collaborations with Daisuke Yokota and IPG Project. A conceptual work in the form of a hybrid book (part photobook, part novella) based on events that take place in the criminal underworld of New York City.

The protagonist, bored with his mundane existence and day to day routine, decides one night to walk aimlessly through mid-town Manhattan. Serendipitously ending up in Times Square, a tasteless corporate Disneyland and haven to seedy business, drugs, prostitution and crime, he finds himself intrigued by the area and begins being drawn back night after night. Unexpectedly, he soon gets to know some of the regulars who hang around the streets and eventually meets a curiously compelling character. Quickly befriended, the protagonist is taken on a journey down a convoluted path riddled with deception. Hustle after hustle, lie after lie, a string of events leads to an unforeseen, undesirable and potentially dangerous situation.