Anarchy Apartmento

Mari Kojima’s photos show you things that don’t look polished. A friend’s bleeding nose. Naked bodies that aren’t in the business of being sexy. People at the end of a long night. There’s something fearless about it, or maybe just honest—the distinction gets thin when you’re pointing a camera at the actually-real instead of the made-for-camera.

She was born in Shimane, on the Japan Sea side of the country where the weather stays interesting. Did a year in Tasmania at some point, which is the kind of decision that tells you something about a person—Tasmania isn’t somewhere you end up by accident. Then Chicago and New York for school, fashion design competitions and some wins, the whole ambitious arc. She came back to Japan last summer though, and now she’s a photographer, does something in consumer electronics, DJs on the radio. Not scattered so much as intentionally moving, like she knows staying in one place with one practice would be the thing that killed it.

Her work is colorful without being loud about it. Each shot just sits there, patient and matter-of-fact, letting the brightness be bright. She photographs people she knows and people she doesn’t, and you can feel the difference—there’s an ease with the close ones, a curiosity with the strangers.

You can see everything on her blog, We Are The Little Island Management. The title is the whole vibe right there—deliberately strange, deliberately formal in that way that makes you smile because you get that she’s fucking with the straightforward nature of naming things. That’s the person on the other side of the camera.