Architectural photographer Cody Ellingham takes to the streets of Tokyo and Shanghai to reveal secrets old and new

The night-time neon lights of Tokyo, from Cody Ellingham’s Derive project
The night-time neon lights of Tokyo, from Cody Ellingham’s Derive project

Ellingham, a creative based in Tokyo, came to photography while travelling through northern Japan shortly after it was devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Volunteering in the town of Otsuchi-Cho in Iwate, he was moved to capture on camera the foundations of buildings and towns that had been exposed in the disaster and streets that no longer existed. Shooting with a Sony a7RII camera fitted with specialist architectural lenses, he began sharing his work on Instagram as @cbje_tokyo in earnest in 2016.

Since then, Ellingham has moved to exploring other facets of the urban experience, including Japanese public housing in his series Danchi Dreamsand the night-time neon lights of some of the world’s high-tech megacities in Derive

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