Manhoru by Thomas Couderc compiles a collection of Japanese manhole covers. Captured by the author on a trip to Japan, or gleaned later from internet, this original corpus invites to discover a subtle art often ignored in Europe, and particularly in France where access to the sewers are constrained by standard cast iron plates, which are sadly and exclusively functional.
In Japan, the manhole covers (manhorukaba in Japanese) play at the sign and tell us stories. Fruit of a singular political decision, these plates reveal a superlative territory: glorious past or successful present, mascots and local legends, fauna, flora or famous monuments…
This unpublished book brings together on nearly 130 pages a hundred photographs transformed to bring out only black and white drawings, as they probably existed before becoming a mold then a plate in bas-relief. Put together for the first time in a single collection, these banal everyday objects alone reveal the particular and giant graphic universe of the Japanese archipelago.. - The publisher