Part travel diary and part love letter to Tokyo and Osaka, French artist Jean-Vincent Simonet's gorgeously produced book In Bloom offers a searing journey into the heart of Japanese underground culture, in which analog images fluidly fuse with collage and montage. Simonet also uses water, chemicals, long exposure and torchlight to transform the surface of his prints, which depict fugitive scenes of sexual abandon, partying and urban nightlife. In Bloom is permeated by a thrilling atmosphere of overload, exuberance and entropy. Body and decor, nature and artifice, poses and emotions collide and merge into the atmosphere of excess that forms the basis of Simonet’s sensibility.
