From Monday, March 2 to Friday, March 13, 2026, the newly renovated GARDE Gallery will present a solo exhibition, “TOKYO URBAN PORTRAITS”, by photographer Nicola Maniero. We invite you to experience this exhibition together with the newly reborn space of GARDE Gallery.
Exploring the City through Portraits
Urban Portraits is a photographic exhibition that investigates the contemporary city through the faces of those who inhabit it. Rather than approaching the urban environment through architecture, infrastructure, or recognizable landmarks, the exhibition shifts attention to the human presence embedded within public space. The city is not described directly; it is inferred through expressions, gestures, and fleeting encounters that reveal the psychological and emotional conditions produced by dense metropolitan life.
The portraits presented in the exhibition are the result of chance meetings in streets, stations, and transitional spaces. They capture individuals at moments when attention drifts, defenses lower, or inner states briefly surface. These are not portraits meant to define identity or narrate personal histories. Instead, they function as fragments—partial, unresolved, and open—reflecting the instability and ambiguity that characterize contemporary urban existence.
By excluding explicit contextual information, Urban Portraits resists the traditional documentary impulse to explain or locate. The surrounding city remains mostly invisible, reduced to traces of light, texture, or atmosphere. This deliberate absence shifts the focus toward the face as a site where the pressures of the city accumulate: fatigue, solitude, resilience, vulnerability, and quiet resistance coexist within a single frame. Each image becomes a threshold between interior and exterior, private and public.
The exhibition rejects the spectacular or iconic representation of the city. Instead, it proposes an alternative reading of urban space grounded in proximity and encounter. The portraits emerge from unplanned situations, shaped by the photographer’s physical presence and by the unpredictable dynamics of public space. This method acknowledges the ethical tension inherent in street photography, emphasizing uncertainty rather than control, and presence rather than possession.
Seen collectively, the portraits form a composite image of the city itself. The exhibition does not present a coherent narrative or linear sequence, but a constellation of moments that echo one another through posture, gaze, or emotional tone. Repetition and variation generate rhythm, suggesting a shared condition rather than individual stories. The city appears not as a fixed environment, but as a mutable field of relationships continuously produced by those who pass through it.
Ultimately, the exhibition proposes a slowed-down form of observation. In a context dominated by speed, consumption, and visual overload, Urban Portraits asks viewers to pause and confront the presence of others. It suggests that the city can be understood not through its monuments or skylines, but through the fragile, transient, and deeply human moments that unfold within it every day.
Nicola Maniero
Nicola Maniero is an Italian architect and photographer based in Tokyo. He graduated in Architecture from IUAV University of Venice, where he developed an early interest in the relationship between space, perception, and everyday life. Since 2010, he has been part of Kengo Kuma & Associates, where he is currently Partner, working on cultural, infrastructural, and urban projects across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
His architectural practice is characterized by a strong sensitivity to context, materiality, and public space. Over the years, he has been involved in complex international projects that explore architecture as a mediator between landscape, social use, and collective experience. This background has deeply influenced his approach to photography, which he considers an extension of architectural thinking rather than a separate discipline.
Alongside his professional activity as an architect, Maniero has developed an independent photographic research focused on the contemporary city. His work investigates urban life at a human scale, paying particular attention to marginal situations, everyday gestures, and moments that escape planned representation. Rather than depicting architecture as an object, his photography explores how built environments are inhabited, perceived, and emotionally experienced.
Nicola Maniero Solo Exhibition “TOKYO URBAN PORTRAITS”
Dates: 2 to 13 March, 2026
Time: 11:00～18:00
Venue: GARDE Gallery (ALLIANCE Building 4F 5-2-1 Minami-Aoyama Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Closed: Sundays
URL: https://www.art-adf.jp/?sl=en
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