This book dummy is inscribed to a collector: 'First dummy of Tokyo / NY June 19th 2007 / [signed] Jacob Aue Sobol / 1/5'. The series was published the following year as I, Tokyo (2008).

Jacob Aue Sobol was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1976. His photographs focus on the universality of human emotion and the search for love within often harsh surroundings. He joined Magnum Photos as an associate in 2007 and became a full member in 2012.

Besides his native Denmark, Aue Sobol has settled for long periods in Canada, Greenland, Guatemala, Japan, Thailand, and Russia. In 2006, he moved to Tokyo and spent eighteen months making photographs that explore his loneliness and need for connections in the confined reality of the Japanese capital.

'Initially I felt invisible. Each day I would walk the streets without anyone making eye-contact with me. Everyone seemed to be heading somewhere – it was as if they had no need of communication. Most mornings I would take the Chuo-line from Nakano to Shinjuku, and even though the train would be packed with salary-men and school girls in uniform, I rarely heard a word being spoken.

And so I began taking my pocket camera out with me on the streets and in the parks. Rather than focusing on the impressively tall buildings and the eternal swarm of people, I began searching for the narrow paths and the individual human presence in a city that felt both attractive and repulsive at the same time.'

Book dummy, inscribed by Sobol in black ink on first page with a printed title label; (300 x 210 mm, 11¾ x 8¼ in); 51 black & white photographs printed in inkjet (incl. covers), leperello-bound with tape, occasionally loosened, loose in photo-illustrated wrappers, poster for 'Book Dummies' exhibition curated by Victor Sira at the International Center of Photography, New York (25 October - 27 November 2008). laid in, near-fine.