Grain of Light Film photography journal

Forty-Five Copies Is Enough — How a Tokyo Seen From a Postal Round Reaches the Shop That Has Been Selling the Book

Photography and Place
Exhibition; Photobook; Postcard; Mail Art; Sumida; Tokyo; Self-Publishing
1831 words

A letterbox usually stands on the line between the public road and private land.

Not inside the wall, not inside the entrance. Somewhere you can reach from the street that belongs to the house. There is an occupation that goes in there every day.

Bruno Quinquet's exhibition "YUBIN / Records of a Tokyo Postal Round" runs from 19 September to 12 October 2026 at nagaya paper lab in Kyojima, Sumida, Tokyo1.

A note first. I have not been to the venue. I have seen neither the exhibition nor the publications discussed below. What I have are the announcements published by the venue and the artist, and the product page in the shop's online store.

A corner of a dim alley. At the foot of a large ginkgo tree, a black letterbox covered in stickers stands on a post. Behind it two red torii gates recede, with a stone fox seated on a pedestal. The ground is entirely covered in fallen ginkgo leaves
One of the "YUBIN" photographs used in the exhibition announcement. Image source: nagaya paper lab, "Bruno Quinquet Photography Exhibition: YUBIN / Records of a Tokyo Postal Round" (6 September 2026). Rights in the image belong to the artist.

A letterbox plastered with stickers, an Inari torii, and a stone fox, all facing the same stretch of road. The line marking whose ground is whose folds over itself several times inside this one frame. The venue's announcement describes what the work is looking at: "you come upon a scene in which letterboxes of every kind — some matching the age and style of the building, some not — are placed at the boundary between public and private"1.

What comes out is not a photobook but a box of postcards

The important thing about this work may be the output format rather than the subject.

"YUBIN" is an ongoing project taking the twenty-three wards of Tokyo one at a time, published as a series of postcard books in boxed-set form. The venue's announcement puts it this way: "the postcard format is a poetic and conceptual mechanism for moving these photographs through the postal system"1.

Photographs taken from a postal worker's vantage, made so as to travel by post.

Each limited-edition volume contains a folding fine-art print of three postal scenes and a single postcard inviting the recipient to take part in the mail-art project "YUBIN round trip"1. Send that postcard back, and an unpublished image comes back to you2.

According to the artist's site, five volumes have appeared so far — Chiyoda (2021), Shibuya (2023), Sumida (2023), Minato (2024) and Taito (2025) — each in an edition of forty-five2.

Hold on to that number.

The shop that has been selling the book is showing it, in the ward where it was shot

This exhibition centres on photographs taken in Sumida1.

nagaya paper lab is in Kyojima, in that same ward. It occupies one unit of a seven-unit row house built in 1932, and works around art books, printing, binding and coffee3. It does risograph printing, hand binding, dummy books and binding workshops, and sells photobooks and artists' books. Most recently it held a Yoshikatsu Fujii photobook show from 17 August to 13 September, an art-book reading group titled "Books for Keeping Memory" on 5 September, and a ghost-story bar in the row house on 21 September3.

And this shop has been stocking Quinquet's YUBIN selection for some time1. It currently lists "〒 YUBIN selection | Bruno Quinquet (signed)" as a product in its online store4.

The organiser is the shop itself5.

The venue gives its own reason. "For nagaya paper lab, a place that handles books and printed matter and cares about their passing from person to person, showing this work has a very natural connection"1.

Laid out in order: photographs taken walking Sumida become a box of forty-five postcards; the box reaches a shop in Sumida that stocks it; and the shop mounts the exhibition, in the ward where the photographs were taken. The route is the condition of the show.

There is no independent reporting at all

I could not find a single piece written from reporting on this exhibition.

There are three sources: the venue's own announcement (dated 6 September 2026), the listing on the Sumida cultural information site (estimated at 10 September from image timestamps), and a posting on an exhibition-listing site. The latter two match the venue's announcement almost word for word on dates, hours and associated events; they carry the organiser's text5. Since the organiser is the venue, all three are primary sources and interested parties at once.

Writing "under-reported" here would probably be the wrong move.

A book in an edition of forty-five is not going to attract national coverage. This work was designed from the start to reach a small number of people and come back by post. The absence of reporting is in proportion to that design.

So what is worth checking is not the number of articles but the route to the thing itself. And that is public. Admission is free; the artist appears at an opening talk from 16:00 on 19 September, with no registration and no charge6. The "YUBIN FIELD WALK" from 14:00 on 3 October costs ¥1,500 with advance registration, and spends an hour walking the alleys of Kyojima around the venue with the artist. The venue's announcement is careful to say it is "not a workshop for learning a prescribed way of photographing," and that "people who take photographs and people who do not can both take part"6.

What has not been confirmed

The number of works on show is stated nowhere. Not in the venue's announcement, not in the Sumida listing, not on the artist's site.

The relationship to the existing Sumida volume is unclear. That volume appeared in 2023. Whether this is the same selection, an expansion, or a different arrangement goes unmentioned; the announcements say nothing about the published volumes.

Nor does anything say the "YUBIN round trip" will run during the exhibition. The artist's site describes it as a mechanism bundled with the publications; nothing states that visitors can take part at the venue.

No capacity is given for the field walk. The same shop states ten places for its ghost-story bar and about seven for its reading group, so something of that order seems likely — but that is inference.

The edition of forty-five rests solely on the artist's own site, with no third-party confirmation. Nor have I checked which volumes remain available.

Even the name varies. The venue writes ブルノ・カンケ, given name first; the Sumida cultural information site writes カンケ・ブルノ, surname first. The artist's own site gives "Bruno Quinquet," where Quinquet is the surname.

And the name of the person running the venue, its opening date, and how the row house was converted are all absent from public information.

If you go

The run is 19 September to 12 October. Hours are 10:00–13:30 Wednesday to Friday and 13:00–19:00 on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays; closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and also on 22 and 23 September1. Weekday hours end at 1:30 in the afternoon, so assume the weekend is the only realistic option after work.

Entry is free, and so is the opening talk, with no registration. The only thing that costs money is the field walk on 3 October.

The venue is at 3-13-6 Kyojima, Sumida-ku, Tokyo. What else stands along that same street is probably faster to see in person. That is the kind of thing this work is looking at.

Sources

  1. nagaya paper lab, "Bruno Quinquet Photography Exhibition: YUBIN / Records of a Tokyo Postal Round," dated 6 September 2026. The dates of 19 September to 12 October 2026, the venue address, the opening hours (10:00–13:30 Wednesday to Friday, 13:00–19:00 Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, closed Mondays and Tuesdays and also 22 and 23 September), the focus on photographs taken in Sumida, the shop's history of stocking YUBIN selection, the boxed-set postcard-book format, the folding fine-art print of three postal scenes and the single "YUBIN round trip" postcard included in each limited-edition volume, and the quoted statement and venue comment are all from this page (checked 18 September 2026). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Bruno Quinquet's official "YUBIN" page. The publication history (vol. 1 Chiyoda 2021, vol. 2 Shibuya 2023, vol. 3 Sumida 2023, vol. 4 Minato 2024, vol. 5 Taito 2025), the edition of forty-five copies each, and the mechanism whereby returning the enclosed postcard brings back an unpublished image are all from this page. The print runs are the artist's own statement; no third-party confirmation has been checked. ↩ ↩2

  3. The nagaya paper lab site and its event listing. The building as one unit of a seven-unit row house built in 1932, the focus on art books, printing, binding and coffee, the risograph printing, hand binding, dummy books and binding workshops, the shop's photobook and artists' book categories, the Yoshikatsu Fujii photobook show (17 August – 13 September 2026), the art-book reading group "Books for Keeping Memory" (5 September 2026, ¥1,100 plus one drink, about seven places) and the ghost-story bar in the row house (21 September 2026, ¥2,000, ten places) are all from this site. No mention of the operator's name, the opening date or the conversion history could be found. ↩ ↩2

  4. The nagaya paper lab online store product "〒 YUBIN selection | Bruno Quinquet (signed)" (checked 18 September 2026). The shop writes the name as ブルノ・カンケ, given name first. Stock levels and prices are not treated here. ↩

  5. The listing page on the Sumida cultural information site. That the organiser is nagaya paper lab, and the ¥1,500 fee and advance registration, are from this page. No posting date appears in the body, footer, meta tags or time elements, but the HTTP Last-Modified headers of the two flyer PDFs and the main image it references all fall between 11:13 and 11:15 Japan time on 10 September 2026, so the listing is estimated at 10 September 2026. This is an inference from file modification times on the server, not a stated publication date. The text of this page and of the exhibition-listing site matches the venue's announcement closely, and no article based on independent reporting could be found. The Internet Archive was out of service when checked, so establishing a first-publication date from a snapshot was not possible. ↩ ↩2

  6. nagaya paper lab, "3 October: 'Seeing the City Through a Delivery Worker's Eyes — YUBIN FIELD WALK' with Bruno Quinquet," dated 6 September 2026. The date and time of 3 October 2026, 14:00–15:00, meeting at nagaya paper lab, the roughly one-hour duration, and the statements that it is "not a workshop for learning a prescribed way of photographing" and that "people who take photographs and people who do not can both take part" are from this page. The ¥1,500 fee and the requirement to register in advance come from the Sumida cultural information site listing. Neither states a capacity. ↩ ↩2