Sohei Nishino on his Diorama Map photo collages

Artist-cartographer Sohei Nishino roams the city for hours on end—camera and metro map in hand—to capture his surroundings with spontaneity. “I make a map with my own personal memory and experience,” he says, referring to his process of stitching together individual 35mm frames to recall the city through the eyes of an individual. So far, Nishino has constructed visual accounts of London, Istanbul, Berlin, and Jersusalem (among others), locating his inspiration in the first map-maker of Japan. In the 1800s, Tadataka Ino famously traversed the country, on foot, to precisely measure the land (over a period of 3,736 days!). Although Ino and Nishino share syllables and a worn-out pair of shoes in common, Nishino’s memory maps are quick to skip accuracy for personal traces of experience.