TOKYO UP, DOWN (Japan, 2009)
Post-industrial urban society demands an efficient use of space. For decades the solution lay in skyscrapers, which fundamentally altered social space and the structure of communities. The lift, a form of transportation that makes vertical living possible, has played a key role in this. Xavier Comas recorded the lifts of Tokyo in black and white, revealing the essential paradox of estrangement in the metropolis: emotional distance cheek by jowl with unavoidable physical proximity.
