STREET GRAPHICS TOKYO

All over the world the street has become a public art gallery of visual icons, each city with permanent collections and temporary exhibits. Tokyo's vibrant street graphics combine ancient traditions, 20th-century mass production and a 21st-century urban vision that is uniquely Japanese. Asian street style meets Western consumerism in a colourful clash of imagery, cartoon characters advertise the police or sexual services, slot machines sell erotica, pets and cops are robots and tower blocks double as giant digital TV screens. Barry Dawson's photographic vision of Tokyo forms a creative reference for students and practitioners of design and an offbeat pictorial guide for visitors.