Photograph "Cigarette Break", print "Being 20 in Tokyo"

"Pause Cigarette" by Xabi Etcheverry, original numbered print 821. Xabi Etcheverry was born in Bayonne in 1976. He trained as a photographer at the Fine Arts School in Montreal and then worked as a set photographer for cinema. Between shoots, he fills his life with more or less distant and more or less long travels, exploring Africa and South America, where he truly enjoys himself and hones his journalistic eye. He has held exhibitions in Paris and his home region featuring images brought back from Mexico, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso. Initially set for a short stay in Japan, he ends up staying for over a year (from September 2002 to June 2004), returning with a series of black and white photographs. Based in Tokyo at first, he does not hesitate to explore the tiniest corners of the Japanese archipelago. By the end of his journey, he brings back an album of photographs exclusively in black and white, revealing a city of extremes and paradoxes between East and West, tradition and modernity.