TOMIYASU HAYAHISA: four years of human oddity around a ping pong table

In 2011, Japanese born photographer Tomiyasu Hayahisa was sitting by the window of his Leipzig apartment when he spotted a fox crossing the adjacent athletic field. Transfixed, he watched as the fox calmly trotted along until it reached a lone ping pong table. The fox suddenly stopped and stared curiously at the table before running off out of view.

For the next 4 years, Hayahisa would routinely run to his window with a camera hoping to glimpse the fox once again. Unfortunately, the fox would never reappear. However, in the process of watching and waiting - Hayahisa stumbled across something even more interesting. As he spent days staring at the ping pong table, he noticed that it seemed to be a magnet for local residents and people passing by. Almost every day people would stop and use the table for all sorts of activities - almost none of which were table tennis. People would use it to have parties, as a sunbathing spot, hide beneath it to escape the rain or use it as a support for morning stretches.

Hayahisa began taking photos of the various people that gathered around this table and before long it became a passion project. It consumed his life as he would stay at home as much as possible, even on Christmas and New Year, hoping to catch sight of an interesting group converging around the table. Over the four years, Hayahisa obsessively snapped photos across every season of unknown people engaging in a medley of activities from the everyday to the bizarre. Thanks to Hayahisa’s neurotic and compulsive devotion to capturing these moments, we are afforded a fascinating opportunity to observe the idiosyncrasies and habits of human behavior. Hayahisa doesn’t provide any context and thus we are simply presented with a window into the lives of others.

The series was recognized by Mack Books, published as ‘TPP’ and won the Mack First Book Award in 2018. Since this project, Hayahisa has explored various other equally interesting photographic projects that can be viewed on his personal website. Many of his other projects are similarly composed of photos taken over a time scale of multiple years and investigate the peculiarities of human behavior.