Berlin / Deep in Thought

Berlin / Deep in Thought is Toshitsugu Yamawaki's black-and-white meditation on the city of Berlin, made as a study of the accumulated historical and political weight held in a single place.

Published by the artist's own imprint, Studio a la page, in 2014, the 492-page hardcover was issued in a numbered edition of 200 copies. In his artist's statement Yamawaki describes photographing Berlin's streets as an encounter with layered time, past, present and future seeming to exist together in the same moment, and describes the book as a collection of prints alongside his own analysis and considerations of that feeling, with the double title framing the city as a subject for contemplating what persists across its history.

Yamawaki (born Tokyo, 1956) worked as an art director in advertising before turning to photography and painting full-time in 2000; he later won second prize at the Kassel PhotoBookFestival's Photobook Award for his book Dual I & II. Berlin / Deep in Thought continues that body of work's interest in extended, book-length visual essays produced through his own studio.