Labyrinths

I took the photos in Labyrinths while living in Japan from 1991 to 2011, and during the many return trips I’ve made since then.

Living in Tokyo changed my photography. Tokyo is a place that seeps into your subconscious, changing you little by little. Without being fully aware of it, the pictures I took started to change too. I believe that if you live in Tokyo long enough, you are almost compelled to take pictures with a certain ethos — the shiny veneer starts to wash away and the layers underneath start to emerge, some seen, others only felt.

I ask you to experience this book from beginning to end, letting each page flow into the next. There’s an intention behind how the images and text unfold, but I ask for you to decode it. Instead, I hope you’ll find your own meaning, something compelling enough to draw you back to the book time and again.

Edward Osborn

Labyrinths can be purchased online at photoeye.com or in person at Basket Books in Houston, Texas

  • $65
    Published November 2024
    9.8in x 9in
    108pp, 58 images
    Textured Flexibound cover
    157 gsm Matte Paper
    ISBN 979-8-9901488-0-2

  • … We who grew up in Tokyo are familiar with sad ghost stories since childhood. These days Tokyo is considered to be one of the most colorful and lively cities in the world. It may be true, but we know that the real landscape of Tokyo is hidden behind that garish surface. Edward Osborn’s first photobook “Labyrinths” successfully captures the true essence of Tokyo. He spent many years in Tokyo, so he knows what the real Tokyo is. He sees ghosts in the metro, small izakaya along narrow alleyways, and even in the busy Shibuya Crossing. In Tokyo, those medieval ghosts are living with us, breathing behind us, and murmuring beside us. Edward somehow succeeded in being with them, as though he were a solitary mystic with his camera.

    Yasuhiro Ogawa, Photographer

    Osborn’s images capture the rhythms of a city constantly reinventing itself, where past and future brush up or collide against one another. His book Labyrinths is comprised of moments both fleeting or profound, and leaves the reader to choose which. Osborn’s Tokyo is a maze of shifting perspectives, drawing viewers into the subtle poetry of urban life.

    Ivan Vartanian, Publisher-Author-Editor at Goliga Books (Japan)

    Ed Osborn’s photos pull you into a vast city, or is it a dreamscape? - exploring its light and lack thereof, figures real and perhaps imagined, what’s solid and what’s transient, and the seen and the half-seen and the unseen. His photos balance, and sometimes let totter, a seemingly impossible complexity of figures, structures, fragments, vistas, and motion. The photos in Labyrinths have a wonderful delicacy and deliver mystery, insight., and delight, in a flow, filled with shifts and surprises, that you will want to return to again and again.

    Allen Wheatcroft, Photographer

    “This is a mesmerizing, contemplative, emotional, and thought-provoking collection of black and white images, each of them complicated, most of them urban landscapes in Japan. Appropriately titled, the images give the feeling of being placed in a maze. The people here are small in their settings, and there is no clear way to discern a pathway out, or even onward. Historically, a labyrinth might be confusing, with a Minotaur waiting at the middle, and it might also be unicursal, with a clear path in and out, used for walking meditation. The bits of text in this book point toward a dreamlike awareness, pointing to both clarity and complication, and the images celebrate this duality. Every image is worth getting lost in.”

    W. Scott Olsen, Artist-in-Residence, Frames Magazine

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

    Tokyo Photographic Museum

The video above is comprised of stills from Labyrinths but is its own experience, different from the book — like stepping into an alternate set of realities. It features a haunting score by my daughter, Natsumi Osborn, and video editing by Pavel Nedzvedz. The ideal way to watch it is on a larger screen, in a darkened room with good sound, but you can enjoy it however you like.