In his series Shanghai Layers, Japanese photographer Sasaki Makoto has captured the city of Shanghai in a unique and energetic way. Using long exposures, Makoto documents the largest city in China by capturing flickers of illumination over dozens of seconds, which produce a brilliantly glowing urban landscape.
The bright lights of Shanghai at night illuminate the scenes in a pulsating glow of urban hustle and bustle. From a unique view at the top of the buildings, we see skyscrapers transformed into futuristic abstractions in which city dwellers work, live, and thrive. Makoto says, “My aim is to get to feel the city’s personality from the brilliance and color of the light of the time stacked in the city of Shanghai. I hope that we get a feel of the fact that we are living in passage of time and also that individual life, city and society are formed by accumulation of time from an unusual viewpoint.”
