100 Years in Tokyo: Portraits of People in Japan From Ages 0 Through 100
Between 2009 and 2012, Finnish photographer Petri Artturi Asikainen roamed the streets of Tokyo in search of subjects for his project 100 Years in Tokyo. His goal was to collect portraits of people for all the ages between 0 through 100. The result of the effort is a book that contains 202 beautiful portraits — the faces of a man and a woman for each age in that range.
Using a Nikon D3 DSLR, Asikainen would approach strangers (or their parents) and ask two questions. The first was, “Can I take a picture of you?” If the answer was yes, he would ask a second (more important) question: “How old are you?”
By the end of three years of shooting this project off and on, Asikainen approached nearly 2,500 people and captured roughly 500 portraits. The images show people from all walks of life: students, businessmen, the homeless, nursing home residents, and people with various hobbies.
Once he had the images he needed, he set to work editing them down to 202 of the best portraits.
The 216-page photobook is now widely available in Tokyo and Helsinki. You can find details of its availability here. Here’s a video showing a flip-through of the entire book:
If you like this idea of portraits ranging from 0 to 100, check out this “moving images” video we shared recently, this video showing ages 1-100 in 150 seconds, and Belgian photographer Edouard Janssens’s project 1 to 100 Years Project.
Image credits: Photographs by Petri Artturi Asikainen and used with permission
