Following last week’s post on global street-style bloggers, I wanted to check in with Shoichi Aoki, who began photographing street styles in the nineteen-eighties. The Japanese photographer has created three magazines on the subject: Street features London street style and street snaps at Paris and New York Fashion Week; Fruits focusses on street snaps of girls from Harajuku, Tokyo; and Tune collects snaps of Harajuku’s boys. He’s also published two books.

Here’s a selection of images from Aoki’s three magazines, followed by a brief Q. & A.





1 / 10 Chevron Chevron From Fruits (1998)

Q: What sparked your interest in photographing street fashion?

A: It was during a period that Japanese street fashion was boring, conservative, and not creative that I saw street fashion from London and Paris and was really moved by it. I came to see that mankind, since its origin, is inextricably linked with fashion. Much in the same way that language differentiates between two groups, fashion was born from the desire to create a clear distinction between oneself and others. The act of people wearing clothing has value as art, and it has become my life’s work to document this phenomenon.

Q: What is unique about your photographic style?

A: I am not so much photographing as I am collecting my subjects. It’s not that I just want to take photos of people—I want to see people’s inner thoughts, their personalities come to the surface. This, to me, is fashion, and my goal is to document it. When I shoot, I am trying not to express my own proclivities or show my creativity. Seeing someone on the street wearing something killer actually moves me emotionally, giving me a feeling of pleasure.

Q: What is distinctive about street style in Japan?

A: The kids I shoot in Harajuku aren’t trying to be sexy, they aren’t following the trends from apparel makers or media—they are just having fun with fashion, I think. I launched Street magazine in 1985 and shot all the photos from 1985 until 1997. Nowadays it’s all shot by my staff. I see two main themes in the Street magazine issues from the era that I was shooting. One theme I was pursuing, mostly in London, was a “slice of space and time.” Meaning I was recording the style being executed on the highest level on the street, which existed only at that moment. I wanted to convey this youth culture to Japan. Another theme was collecting and recording images of the guests with amazing style who came from all over the world to attend Paris Fashion Week. I started Fruits magazine in 1997 and shot the photos from then until 2002. The photos are currently taken by my staff members (as are all the images in Tune). I wanted to document this new movement in Japan. I approached shooting these young people like a photographer would shoot a sculpture in an art gallery.

Translated by Daphne Mohajer.