These are the planets of manhole covers taken at the Tsukiji Market.
The Tsukiji Market is a wholesale market in Tokyo that was famous for its tuna auctions. I took these photos a couple months before the market relocated in October 2018.
As I was walking through the market with my camera, a manhole cover caught my eye.
I’m not a manhole cover enthusiast, but the aging condition of those manhole covers fascinated me.
Many trucks and carts come and go in the market. The manhole covers must have been run over by them and worn down over the years.
Normally these would be replaced, but they were left out in the market, so I found a lot of great textured manhole covers.
Afterwards, I completely forgot about the photos, but recently, I came across them again, and when I developed the photos, the excitement of the shoot came back to me.
This time I edited the manhole covers into a spherical shape. I felt there was something cosmic about the lid, so I wanted to represent it as a planet.
This is how I was able to capture the manhole planets of the Tsukiji market.
Since the original manhole covers may have been discarded, these photos are a valuable record of the Tsukiji universe.
