Just Like on the Radio Erika Yoshino Osiris/2011/Japanese/168 x 288 mm The gaze intersects with the sound of Brigitte Fontaine. Deep despair and chaotic exaltation. Tension and relaxation. Erika Yoshino announces a hidden crisis without knowing it-- -Photographer Erika Yoshino Since the mid-1990s, photographer Erika Yoshino (b. 1970) has been producing numerous black-and-white works as a so-called "street photographer," participating in solo exhibitions and many group shows abroad, and gaining recognition as a photographer who plays a role in contemporary Japanese photography. Critic Nobuno Kuraishi once called Yoshino a "savage snapper" for her close-up, wildly framed snapshots of people gathered downtown or at resorts, which evoke an animal-like sensibility. In 2010, Yoshino made a fresh start and began shooting in color, and by July of the same year, he had amassed a body of work that culminated in this book, "Like a Radio. The area where he photographed expanded from central Tokyo to the northern part of the Kanto region, and his gaze turned not only to people passing by on the streets, but also to various phenomena, such as a swamp in a vacant lot with blue light, a room with white curtains, the gray asphalt in a parking lot after rain, and the interior of a bicycle shop with green light. Yoshino's characteristic delicacy and violence in approaching his subjects is not lost when the work is changed to color, and the unconnected wanderings of his gaze, with their unique speed and rhythm, announce to the viewer the arrival of an unknown story. This is Erika Yoshino's first full-fledged photo book, which offers a new kind of photographic pleasure, different from the private photographs documenting one's surroundings or the street photography that has established itself as a style. At the end of the book is a diary of the period during which she took the photographs included in this book, which is neither fiction nor memorandum, and conveys her mysterious sensibility. The title of the book, "Like a Radio," is taken from the song "Comme à la radio," which was a big hit in 1970 when French singer Brigitte Fontaine sang it with the free jazz band Art Ensemble of Chicago.