Book on the myriad uses of the humble blue tarp, TOKYO BLUES

Adam "Everyware" Greenfield writes,

Everywhere you go, there are certain things which play heroic roles in knitting the world together, and which somehow remain anonymous, even unseen. The first book from Do projects, Tokyo Blues, is the story of one of them: the common blue PVC plastic construction tarp.
Tokyo Blues is a photographic record of Nurri Kim's 2002-2003 investigation into this humble industrial material and the very wide variety of uses to which it's put in the everyday life of Japan.
From construction sites and homeless settlements to cherry-blossom viewing parties in the park, the ubiquitous blue tarp is a constant of Japanese life and a bearer of multiple registers of meaning. In sixty-four images from the boulevards, alleys, sidestreets and interstitial spaces, Tokyo Blues explores these dramatically different contexts, returning something "we see too often, and then forget to see" to full, vivid visibility. The result is a book that provokes its readers to see the city around them with new eyes - whether that city is Tokyo, or their own.
We thought you'd appreciate two things in particular about Tokyo Blues: firstly, that we released a free and freely downloadable PDF of the book simultaneously with its physical publication; and secondly, that the book in both of its forms is offered under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Our philosophy is that you buy the book if you want the object, but the ideas within are and will remain free.

0901 Tokyo Blues. (Thanks, Adam!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

PVC is a horribly toxic material. It’s something that should be phased out, not glorified.
- ike
  
  The post should probably corrected:
  These blue tarps are typically made of polyethylene or nylon coated with polyethylene:
  http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200325359_200325359
  http://www.harpstarps.com/bluepolytarps.php
  Page four of the book even says “…the ubiquitous blue tarps depicted here â€” are made from waterproof polyethylene…”.
  
  Polyethylene and nylon are still petrochemical-derived polymers through and through, but they don’t tend to contain the problematic plasticizers that can leak out of PVC plastics, nor should they contain the chlorine that PVC contains, which can lead to the formation of dioxins if the PVC is burned.
  
  (This is relevant to my interests in materials and blue things!)
poagao

It’s too bad the photographer had to resort to selective coloring rather than composition and light to highlight the subject.
UltraBob

Looks like an interesting book and I look forward to having a look at it. Would have been good of Adam to mention that Nurri Kim is his wife to provide context for the glowing review he gives.
Anonymous

“It’s too bad the photographer had to resort to selective coloring rather than composition and light to highlight the subject.”

If people buy the book, and enjoy it, it’s too bad you can’t appreciate what is, instead of focusing on what’s wrong, in your not-so-humble opinion.
cymk

I love the photography, and I think the color isolation was a good idea. As a consumer, I dig the idea of putting it under creative commons, but as an artist I find it difficult to just let go of creative control of your photos like that.
thomashorne

@cmyk

Are you sure it’s not the other way around? ;)
cymk

@thomashorne

I like free stuff (who doesn’t?) but being a starving artist sucks. Hence my conflicting opinions.
Anonymous

I got interested in this sort of thing when I heard about this one type of pink, nylon string that was used in china during the Cultural Revolution for EVERTYHING. Every clothesline was made of it, most scaffolding was held together by it, etc. More recently, I loved the look on some Hungarian youths’ faces when I explained how Americans use milk crates for bookshelves, storage, TV stands, and other similar uses. They found it ingenious and were amazed at how flippantly we ignored the warnings that the crates belong to the milk distributors.
Nadreck

Pretty much everything in Hamilton, Ontario used to be painted the same shade of green as that was the colour of the paint that people swiped from the local Dofasco steel mills.