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FROM: TRACE issue no. 35
http://www.trace212.com
SUNDAY: to some, a day for Jesus or prayer. To others a different god, or even a belief in fundamental rites of passage, of paying tribute to existence—ceremony if you will.
In Tokyo there are no churches, only shrines, idols, pop stars, cartoons, and the dreams of obsessed teenage girls believing in defying the social norm of ritual and honor by becoming the rock star images that they see while playing the park. The faith is laid on the forward sidewalk edge of super Tokyo’s capital of fashion: Harajuku.
Teenage girls group like a school of fish in a feeding frenzy, the common ground being the arena of Yoyogi Park, an exhibitionist whirlpool and paparazzi showdown. Once inside the beepbopped, heart-throbbed, Hello Kitty freight train phenomenon circle, you are beside yourself. These models are legends in their own lunchbox, as if eclipsing the real world amidst their temple-shrine, involved in the ritual and faith in being here every Sunday rain or shine.
They have been there longer than most can remember. When one girls candle is burnt out of childhood headbangin’ at the hangout, a new star is born and that torch is passed to the next girl ready to burn bright.
A photographers snapshot is candle fuel, burning bright, inside the ego of a girls eye. For these girls, the beauty of chuggin’ along the river of life is being as important as being different – being you. In a land built on conformity, a girl graduates into a fiasco outfit in full parade effect, formally know as a Japanese school girl, business card and all.
In the end, these teenage girls maintain a balanced social order: youth who believe in living out fairytales.
May the gods bless them.
FROM: TRACE issue no. 35
http://www.trace212.com
SUNDAY: to some, a day for Jesus or prayer. To others a different god, or even a belief in fundamental rites of passage, of paying tribute to existence—ceremony if you will.
In Tokyo there are no churches, only shrines, idols, pop stars, cartoons, and the dreams of obsessed teenage girls believing in defying the social norm of ritual and honor by becoming the rock star images that they see while playing the park. The faith is laid on the forward sidewalk edge of super Tokyo’s capital of fashion: Harajuku.
Teenage girls group like a school of fish in a feeding frenzy, the common ground being the arena of Yoyogi Park, an exhibitionist whirlpool and paparazzi showdown. Once inside the beepbopped, heart-throbbed, Hello Kitty freight train phenomenon circle, you are beside yourself. These models are legends in their own lunchbox, as if eclipsing the real world amidst their temple-shrine, involved in the ritual and faith in being here every Sunday rain or shine.
They have been there longer than most can remember. When one girls candle is burnt out of childhood headbangin’ at the hangout, a new star is born and that torch is passed to the next girl ready to burn bright.
A photographers snapshot is candle fuel, burning bright, inside the ego of a girls eye. For these girls, the beauty of chuggin’ along the river of life is being as important as being different – being you. In a land built on conformity, a girl graduates into a fiasco outfit in full parade effect, formally know as a Japanese school girl, business card and all.
In the end, these teenage girls maintain a balanced social order: youth who believe in living out fairytales.
May the gods bless them.
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