About the project:
How do the Japanese live in Japan? How do they live abroad? Do they create their own culture in foreign cities? What do they take with them from home? Feelings, things – sensuous or tangible memories?

Sven Ingmar Thies gained insight into the lives of 82 Japanese citizens in five global cities over the course of nine years:

• Tokyo
• Vienna
• New York
• Shanghai
• Berlin

Through his discreet observation he manages to capture fleeting moments of everyday Japanese life at home and abroad. He depicts the living spaces of a very diverse group – from architects to students, from business people to chefs to artists. Using analogue black-and-white photography, Sven Ingmar Thies combines the subjects’ blurred motions with classic stills of the rooms they live in.

For further information please visit http://www.kaitenart.com

Awards:
Japanese Rooms was awarded the iF gold selection 2008 after it had already won the iF communication design award in the categories photo and book design.

About the book:

• Title: Japanese Rooms
• Photographer: Sven Ingmar Thies
• Authors: Sven Ingmar Thies und Takao Kitayama
• 82 Fotos und Interviews
• Binding: core with "open thread-stitching" in slipcase, 192 pages
• Publishing company: Schwarzerfreitag, initial print run 2.000 (December 2007)
• Languages: English, Japanese
• ISBN: 3937623906
• Size: 29,6 x 20,4 x 2 cm
• Design: Thies Design
• recommended Price: EUR 39,-

Current exhibition:
Museum of Ethnology Vienna, Austria, from April 22 through September 28, 2009

Past exhibitions:
Japanese-German Center Berlin
www.jdzb.de/index.php

About Sven Ingmar Thies:
Sven Ingmar Thies, born in Hamburg in 1969, studied graphic design at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany. As a self-employed graphic designer Sven Ingmar Thies is specialised in branding and developing sustainable combinations of print and online media design. As an artist he primarily develops photo projects and installations – like his one-man exhibition “What Does Love Mean?” in Tokyo, 1998, or “Wave” for USM, 2007.  After years in London and Tokyo, where he lived also with a two-year post-graduate scholarship of the German Academic Exchange Service, he lives and works in Hamburg and Vienna since 1998.

Contact data:
Thies Design
www.thiesdesign.com