Buildings and Trains

Looking up at towers, then down the tracks, until the crossing gates take over the frame.

Japan / 35mm color negative (stock unidentified) / Buildings and Trains — Japan collection, 35mm film archive

The roll begins vertically. A tiled tower leans into an overcast sky, its rooftop sign frame bristling like antennae, an oval emblem lettered in Japanese hanging over the street below. Then the camera finds a sleeker subject: the rounded prow of a steel-and-glass building, its horizontal bands curving away overhead like the hull of a ship stood on end. Two frames circle it, the second letting a street sign blur into the corner, an admission that all of this is being seen from the sidewalk, head tilted back.

Then the gaze drops to track level and the roll changes tempo. A white commuter train with a blue stripe smears past behind a weathered railing, pink flowers holding sharp focus in the foreground while six stories of apartment balconies and a lattice of overhead wires stand still behind the motion. From there the frames push closer: a train dissolving into pure streaks of silver, red, and blue between the dark hardware of a crossing, then the crossing equipment itself, filling the frame, yellow caution plates lettered in black, a red signal lamp burning at the top edge.

The last frame steps back and lets the whole intersection speak at once. A yellow-and-black crossbuck, a convex mirror catching the sky, an orange placard shouting its crossing warning, an emergency button placarded in red, and behind the fence another blue-striped train blurring by, with a tiered skyscraper rising pale and pink-lit in the distance. Buildings that stand perfectly still, trains that never do, and the crossing where the two agree to meet.

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Images

Upward view of a tall tiled building against an overcast sky, with a rooftop sign frame and a large oval sign bearing Japanese characters.
A tower wears its name like a crest, oval and calm, while the sky above stays noncommittal.
Upward view of the rounded corner of a steel-and-glass building, its curved horizontal bands receding toward a pale sky.
The corner of the building curves like a ship's hull stood on end, each band of steel catching a different slice of daylight.
Upward view of the same curved steel building corner, with a blurred street sign intruding at the lower left of the frame.
A second pass at the steel prow, this time with the street refusing to stay out of the picture.
A white commuter train with a blue stripe blurs past behind a metal railing, with pink flowers in the foreground and apartment buildings and overhead wires behind.
The train arrives as a smear of light and stripe, while the flowers on the railing hold perfectly still for their portrait.
An abstract motion blur of a passing train, streaked in silver, red, and blue, framed by dark crossing equipment on the left and an orange edge on the right.
The train passes too close to be a train anymore; it becomes weather, a vertical rain of silver and red.
Close-up of level-crossing signal equipment with a yellow warning sign bearing black Japanese characters, a blurred train passing behind.
Caution, the yellow plate insists, while the thing it warns about slides past in a pale blur behind it.
A red signal lamp and yellow caution sign at a level crossing, with railway tracks and gravel ballast visible behind, tinged with a red flare.
The red lamp leans into the frame like a low sun, washing the caution sign and the empty rails in warning-light weather.
A railway level crossing with a yellow-and-black crossbuck, convex mirror, orange warning signs, and an emergency button placard, as a blue-striped train blurs past with a tall tiered skyscraper in the distance.
The whole crossing assembles for a group portrait — crossbuck, mirror, warnings, and alarm — while the train ghosts through and a skyscraper stands sentry on the horizon.