Behind the Yakuza: documenting the women of Japan’s mafia

Photographer Chloé Jafé’s new series lends a voice to the notoriously closed subculture of women associated with the Yakuza.

The underworld infamy of organised crime has long been romanticised in pop culture. On the silver screen, cult classics like The Godfather or Goodfellas have shaped the public’s perceptions of what being a mobster means. In 2015, Netflix’s Narcos shifted the focus towards Colombia’s criminal organisations through the story of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

In Japan, organised crime syndicates are deeply embedded in the country’s business affairs and culture. However, stories about the women – the wives, daughters, mistresses, and bar hostesses – that orbit around the criminal activities of the male gangsters are rarely heard of.

- Dazed

A World Without People

For a number of reasons, natural and human, people have evacuated or otherwise abandoned many places around the world—large and small, old and new. Gathering images of deserted areas into a single photo essay, one can get a sense of what the world might look like if humans were to suddenly vanish from the planet.

- The Atlantic

WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE DO IT

In times of crisis, the love affairs of strangers remain endlessly absorbing.

I live in Bloomsbury, a London neighborhood whose name is synonymous with a long-gone, still-romanticized period of post-Victorian literary and sexual experimentation. Today, its reputation is built primarily around its convenient spread of transit links, which loop out in every direction, funneling sardine-packed commuters in and out of the hipper, more residential zones of the city. As a result, my pocket of the city is a bustling epicenter of low-stakes weeknight courtship: first or second dates, after-work drinks or single-course meals, arrived at with low expectations and curfews in mind. By 10:30 p.m. most nights, the streets return to quiet. Occasionally, if the weather permits, a pair will linger outside the upscale bar across the road from my flat, struck silly by unexpected chemistry, or too much weeknight wine, or a combination of the two.

- The Outline

Perchance to Dream: Photographing Sleep - Twenty vintage snapshots of watching people sleep

The intimacy of sleep is a subject mainly found in snapshots as opposed to fine art photography, writes Robert E. Jackson. The reason is that to be a witness to such an action, the person holding the camera generally must have a close association with the person sleeping– such as being a friend, lover, or family member. There is a vulnerability to being caught unawares in the act of sleeping, yet there is also a beauty to which these images attest. While voyeuristic in nature, these photos derive from a sense of play- one of the defining aspects of snapshot photography. Such a relationship between subject and photographer as a dualistic (i.e. two person) act of creating a photographic image is pretty much eliminated now in snapshots, as selfies are all about the photographer and the subject being the same person. Part of the “me” of the contemporary photographic narrative as opposed to the “we” of older snapshots.

- Flashbak

Oser la déco érotique

En 2016 et en 2017, au souk@sat, les clients reculaient parfois lorsqu’ils arrivaient à la table d’Amélie Dionoski. Sa gamme Erotico ne fait pas dans la dentelle. Ou plutôt, si : dans le porte-jarretelles en dentelle, brodé sur des coussins ! La déco coquine est aujourd’hui plus courante. Oseriez-vous en ajouter dans votre salon ?

- La Presse

You Need A Japanese James Bond Poster On Your Wall

That's you, that is, mournfully rolling up a Pulp Fiction poster and yanking blue tack from the walls. You're moving in with your partner, and they understandably don't want the new flat to look like a disused Blockbuster branch. So all of those movie posters you collected at university – Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, Scarface – are destined for the bin, to be replaced by Hockneys and house plants. It's truly for the best.

But you can't help it. You need at least one piece of movie memorabilia in the flat to truly make it your own. A small patch of wall space to remind you that, hey, Garden State was pretty good, wasn't it? And if that's the case, then we suggest looking to Japan for inspiration, where the film posters are generally more stylistically exciting and bizarre than their Western counterparts, especially back in the mid-century.

- Esquire

A Photographer’s Ode to Everyday Soviet Architecture

Concrete is a common, humble material—sand, gravel, and cement—but Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sang its praises for the better part of a passionate, detailed, two-hour speech he delivered to an industrial conference in 1954. He proposed that concrete should be used for anything and everything, especially prefabricated and standardized buildings that would help accelerate construction and development. It was, he argued, absolutely vital to the Soviet project. The subsequent boom in mass housing was described by The New York Times in 1967 as an “architectural sputnik.

- Atlas Obscura

Inside one of the oldest adult entertainment pubs in the UK

In June 2019, The Foresters Arms in Southend, Essex was forced to close its doors after over a century in business. Swapping drinks and dancers for deluxe apartments and restaurants, one of the UK’s oldest adult entertainment pubs will be replaced by a £50 million seafront development – much to the dismay of loyal locals.

The pub was especially renowned for its ‘pound in the pot’ dances, where girls would go around with a pint glass, dancing for whoever put money in their cup. It was this, as well as the venue’s eclectic music taste, that drew photographer Sarah Hollamby to The Foresters Arms.

- Dazed