Amazing Collage of Snapshot-Created City Maps by Japanese Artist

File under: ultimate collage art.

I stumbled on these amazing maps by Japanese artist Sohei Nishino. For each of them, he uses up to 4,000 photographs, culling and cutting them into the finished product.

I’m a sucker for great maps, and I always love seeing when someone devotes years of their life to producing a specific craft. Put those things together, and you’ve got my attention.

Berlin

Tokyo

How does he do it? Here’s what he says:

“I walk through these cities, camera in hand, capturing multifaceted views that I then combine, one by one, in accordance with my memories, arranging them into a map that portrays all the singular aspects of the place. The result is quite different from the denotative expression of a map; it uses photographs (single 35mm frames) of concrete objects or shapes as units to recreate a geographical representation, expressing the city through human memories and images.

This means that the finished work is anything but an accurate map, it is simply the town as seen through the eyes of a single individual, a trace of the way in which I walked through it, an embodiment of my awareness, a microcosm of the life and energy that comprise the city.”