Asakusa — Black-and-White Photobook on Tokyo Tattoo Culture
Asakusa is a sustained black-and-white documentary project by Ronin de Goede, built from long-term access to the studio of tattoo master Horikazu and the surrounding social environment in Tokyo's Asakusa district. The work moves between bodies, interiors, streets, and gatherings — staying close to skin, shadow, and surface without converting its subject into spectacle.
Across its sequence, the book shifts between documentary directness and rougher, blurred passages that recall the Provoke-era are-bure-boke sensibility. The result is a sustained inquiry into proximity and permission: who is allowed to look, under what conditions, and what is withheld. De Goede records the studio environment as a system of gestures, waiting, and ritual repetition — the irezumi tradition observed from within rather than from a distance.
Published by Zen Foto Gallery in Tokyo, Asakusa is part of a broader catalogue of analogue photobooks attentive to Japanese visual and subcultural life. It sits within the Photography & Photobooks collection at Lokator100.
About the Photographer
Ronin de Goede (born 1978, Netherlands) works in analogue black-and-white photography and is known for a tactile, high-contrast visual language. His practice emphasizes handmade output and sustained engagement with his subjects over time.
For Asakusa, he developed a long-term documentary approach grounded in repeated visits and maintained access to Horikazu's studio — focusing on light, shadow, and surface detail rather than event or performance. His work has been exhibited in Europe and Japan.
