35 Minutes: One of Tokyo's most important artist-run galleries

From photo lab to art gallery, this tiny space pulls a cult following for each show by the Araiyakushi Photographers Society

The original neon '35mins' photo development sign is repurposed with an ironic edge.

A disused photo processing lab called 35 Minutes (35 分) has become one of Tokyo's most important artist-run galleries. Generating a cult following over the past year, the tiny space in a minor neighborhood (Araiyakushi -- check the map!) hosts only one show per month: a photography exhibition by seven photographers called "35 Minutesmen."

The same seven photographers -- Kota Sake, Emiko Nagahiro, Masayuki Shioda, Junpey, Keisuke Sanada, Tomoko Daido and Pai -- have exhibited together since March 2009, calling themselves the APS -- Araiyakushi Photographers Society.

With the material age of photography in decline -- film stocks dwindling, analog cameras disused and photo processing labs washing up in the streets as dead, empty carcasses -- reanimating a dead photo lab as a gallery seems like a noble act of preservation. The artists, however, are much more pragmatic about their goals.
"We are not young," says Keisuke, "We don't have many chances to make use of our pictures. This is us making our own chance."
Inspired by the D.I.Y. spirit which many young artists adopted during the 1990s, the atmosphere of 35 Minutes is staunchly independent and open. When Shioda is asked why he decided to organize the exhibit, he rebuffs any whiff of agenda or pretense.
"I just asked my friends to join," says Shioda, "And that's all it is. We don't have any concept of it being anything more than that." 

Like many of the other artists, Shioda has a background in commercial photography, contributing to magazines like "Tokion" in the 1990s and publishing his own photo books. 35 Minutes' contributors are genuine photo enthusiasts, lusting after the concept of image.

A party in the confined space of 35 Minutes.

The four walls (and sometimes toilet) display photos by the seven photographers in haphazard constellations. One week, Junpey's images of the adult entertainment industry in Tokyo sit beside a grid of Kota's invasively close faces. And the next week reflective Moroccan landscapes by Keisuke look upon a brutal portrait of a tree by Emiko. Shioda's work is the most consistent: two A4 prints always hang above a set of ecstatic, sun-burnt images of dense foliage, friends, parties and life in general.

Sometimes the photos are profound and articulate, sometimes not. But passing under the glow of the original "35 分" neon facade, the old smell of developing chemicals replaced with the vibrant scent of sweat and cheap alcohol, you realise '35 Minutesmen' is as much a performance and a party as a photo show. Wild deer roasts on a barbecue outside. The owner of a neighboring Izakaya comes in to have a look. Japanese painter Tomoo Gokita makes impromptu portraits of attendees. The crowd flows out into the shopping street, oblivious to near misses with buses and taxis. And everything is awash in camera flashes and clicks.
In the end, 35 Minutes is a space that allows the simple celebration of photography itself -- creating an intentional distance from money, prestige and the normal complications of the art world.
35 Minutes: Kamitakada 5-47-8, Nakano-ku, Tokyo (Arai Yakushi Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line), no phone, www.35minutesmen.com