TTP

TTP is a debut photobook made entirely from a single fixed vantage point: the south-facing window of Hayahisa Tomiyasu's student apartment in Leipzig, Germany, looking down on a public table tennis table, or Tischtennisplatte, that gives the book its clipped title. Over five years, Tomiyasu returned to that same window again and again, and the table itself becomes the true subject, cycling through an improbable range of uses that have nothing to do with table tennis: a sunbathing spot, a makeshift laundry counter, a climbing frame for children, a lunch table for families, a skate obstacle. Winner of the 2018 MACK First Book Award and shortlisted for the Ihei Kimura Prize.

Shot in a flat, deadpan style with a fixed, repeated composition, the photographs function almost like a stop-motion study of a single piece of public furniture and the small society that gathers around it, tracking seasons changing, light shifting, and an unpredictable cast of neighbors drifting in and out of frame across 260 pages. The humor is quiet rather than showy, closer to observational comedy than satire, and it rewards the kind of patient, page-by-page attention that photobook collectors particularly enjoy.