Floating World (2015- )
Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, sun, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves… this is what we call the floating world, “Ukiyo.”
— Asai Ryoi, Tales of the Floating World, c. 1661
The Japanese concept of Ukiyo—the Floating World—described a culture organized around pleasure, distraction, and the suspension of ordinary burdens. In contemporary form, that world has re-emerged not in Edo’s pleasure districts, but at sea.
For the past decade, I have photographed life aboard cruise ships: engineered environments where leisure is staged, desire stimulated, and identity performed within a carefully managed social ecosystem. What began as casual picture-making during voyages with my wife gradually became a way to reconcile my own ambivalence toward the experience. While enjoying the pleasures of cruising, I was simultaneously skeptical of its excesses and artificiality.
I photographed passengers ashore and afloat, the multinational crews sustaining the illusion, and the small details embedded in routine. Over time, the ships revealed themselves as more than vacation venues. They became floating micro-cities—commercial utopias designed to monetize anticipation and affirm aspiration.
The work explores how contemporary leisure operates through spectacle, performance, and participation. Passengers are not naïve; we recognize the artifice, yet willingly collaborate in sustaining it. Cruise ships condense many features of contemporary life: curated authenticity, privatized pleasure, outsourced labor, and the constant stimulation of desire.
My approach remains documentary, though the color and tonal intensity edge toward the hyperreal, reflecting the amplified environment itself. The photographs operate on two registers: seductive at first glance, disquieting on closer inspection.
I am not outside the system I photograph. I eat the food, drink the cocktails, attend the shows, and participate in the same circuits of desire. That tension shapes the work.
