We Float

Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s Happy Victims is on at The Photographer’s Gallery until Nov 16th.

Tsuzuki photographs some thirty individuals who have turned the act of shopping into an indefinable obsession, lying somewhere between artistic expression and an unusual kind of fetishism. Worshipping one individual designer, these men and women consume religiously their chosen labels – Jean Paul Gaultier, Anna Sui, Vivienne Westwood – often at the expense of life’s other necessities.

Two stand out in particular:

Comme des Garçons: He leads a busy life as a buddhist monk in a temple up in Ibaragi, but once a month he comes to Tokyo and uses his condo as a base for shopping and having fun. At the temple he wears monk’s robes, but in Tokyo he wears nothing but Comme Des Garçons.

Anna Sui: Behind a suburban railway terminus, in an archetypal middle class “family condo minium” is this “hers-and-his” love nest. The thoroughly handcrafted interior decor is all her doing, and the closet is filled with her Anna Sui collection… The clothes are rock-loud, venomously stylish, and infused with Anna Sui’s own distinctive spirit that fits perfectly with her own lifestyle.

Related: Kyoichi Tsuzuki interviewed at Metropolis Japan and Shift.