How Tanner Bowden Converted a Common Sight in Japan into a Coffee Table Read

It seems like everyone is going to Japan these days.

Most go for Tokyo and Kyoto, for the temples and shrines, for Mt. Fuji and for snowboarding, for the unbelievably good food. I went for the vending machines. Well, that's somewhat reductive, but after an old 35mm camera helped me notice how interesting and varied Japan's vending machines are, taking photos of as many of them as I could become one of the main reasons (hiking and 7-Eleven egg sandwiches and collecting ceramics were a few of the others). Over multiple trips to Japan, I photographed hundreds of vending machines in cities, small towns, half-abandoned villages, and up remote mountain roads, and they're all collected in my recently published book, The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines.

With a design inspired by vintage nature field guides, The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines is more than 150 pages of photos and comes in a limited and signed edition of 1,000 copies. The book and the 140-plus photos inside it portray a side of Japan not often seen in typical travel photography — a side just opposite the famous temple and one street back from the main road. By focusing on vending machines, the book reveals not just how many and varied they are but also the beauty and complexity in otherwise ordinary scenes of everyday life.

Q. Can you walk us through the exact moment you decided to turn that spark of curiosity into a photographic series—and eventually a full-fledged photo book?

I went to Tokyo for the first time with a group from ASICS to run the Tokyo Marathon. We arrived a few days before the race, and we had activities and events scheduled for some of that time, but in between, I did a lot of wandering around with my camera. The vending machines stood out to me almost immediately, but one morning I'd stopped at Little Nap Coffee Stand for a coffee and to change over the roll of film in my camera and that's when I had the idea to make the entire next roll all vending machines, each frame a different one, as a mini project. So it was caffeine plus circumstances. The idea for the book came later — after another trip to Japan, while I was going through all the photos I'd taken and realized how much I liked them.

Q. Much of your work focuses on everyday life through a fresh lens. Why do you think vending machines, in particular, make for such a compelling subject, and how did you know there was a deeper story worth telling beyond the initial novelty?

At first, I didn't. Undertaking any sort of larger photographic project or any artistic endeavor really requires a degree of commitment, and within that commitment, there's trust. You stick with it, trusting that something will come out of it, and even if nothing does, at the very least, you had a good time and hopefully learned something. Vending machines were an easy subject to focus on because in Japan they're everywhere, and also because I had all this time by myself just walking around. They're also rectangular, and that's easy to compose around, and they're colorful, so they stand out. The novelty was part of it, but I knew I was reacting to more than that — that's where trust came in. Afterward, I realized that the vending machines were simply focal points for all these little slices of life.

Q. You’ve said you’re a big fan of contact sheets. How did the idea of filling an entire contact sheet with vending machine images shape your compositional choices and overall narrative? Were you thinking about how the images would live in sequence from the very start?

I learned photography on digital cameras, and I'd never seen a contact sheet until a few years ago when I took a darkroom course. I ended up liking my contact sheets more than any single image I made in the class. They tell a different sort of story than a single image — as you say, there's a sequence at work — and they reveal a little bit about what the photographer was thinking or going for. The contact sheet idea led to a vertical composition (because I was shooting on a half-frame camera) with the machine, also a vertical rectangle, more or less centered. After seeing that contact sheet printed, I adjusted my approach, widening out and shooting horizontally, but the centered machine stayed, with a few exceptions. I wasn't onto sequencing at that early stage beyond wanting every frame to be a different vending machine.

Q. Your camera of choice for this series was the PEN-F. What made this specific camera the right tool for capturing such fleeting street scenes? Was there a particular film stock or lens setup you leaned on to bring out the sense of everyday realism?

The project started with the PEN-F purely because I'd just bought it. Ironically, it came from an eBay seller in Japan, so I sort of felt like I was bringing it home. Two of the main ideas at work with the book are quantity and variety. The PEN-F is a half-frame camera, so it splits every frame on a roll of film into two, doubling the number of photos you can take. That's quantity. Vending machines are all over the place in Japan; that's also quantity, and that's variety too. So the camera, the subject matter, and the idea were all aligned.

I had a 50mm camera on that camera and shot many of the photos on a Canon AE-1 Program with a 50mm and my digital Canon on a 24-70. The film was nearly all Portra 400, which is ideal for most things, but especially the colors I was looking at and Japan's perpetual golden light.

Q. On a practical level, did you face any challenges — technical or otherwise —while shooting on crowded city streets or at odd hours? How did you adapt your photographic approach when capturing these very public and often overlooked spaces?

Funny thing, this roll of film that led to the contact sheet full of vending machine photos that led to the book, it was the first roll I'd taken on that PEN-F after getting it. Most people would probably shoot a test roll on a new camera from 1963 before taking it on a big trip. A lot of those photos didn't come out, they're overexposed and the focus is off. They're duds! But I could see that the idea was there. Ideas are harder to figure out than exposure and focus.

I've never been good at street photography, I don't have the guts to point my camera in a stranger's face the way some people do. A lot of what I shoot is outdoors, capturing fleeting moments of action or light. I had to learn to wait—for the right person to walk or bike through the frame—and to be okay just standing there looking sort of odd.

Q. Often, travel photography can slip into clichés or reinforce certain stereotypes. How did you navigate this tension when documenting something so iconic to Japan’s cityscape, ensuring your photos felt honest rather than sensationalized?

So many people go to Japan and take photos of all the same things. There's literally a marker in Google Maps called the "Yasaka Pagoda Photo Spot" and if you look it up, I guarantee you'll think, 'Oh I've seen that photo before.' We all have. In Western media there's also this tendency to publish these "weird Japan stories" where the entire goal is pointing at a cultural difference to reinforce the perception of foreignness. "How strange is that?!" is the whole point. These are the two things I wanted to avoid. The first was easy, and I got a lot of funny looks because while everyone was taking pictures of the temples I was over near the bathrooms with the vending machines. The second was trickier. I think it all comes down to intention, and I think the intention is clear in The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines through the design, depth, and the photos themselves.

Q. Was there an image — or a moment behind an image — that completely surprised you or changed the direction of the book?

There's one shot of a vending machine in Tokyo and in person there wasn't really anything special about it. Just a white Dydo machine up against a tiled wall. I took the photo and didn't think much about it. But when I came back to it in editing I saw everything else — the subtle pink of the tile, the recycling bins overflowing but people have sort of neatly stood their empty bottles and cans at the base, the way the line on the street is perpendicular to the tile, all of these elements that made something so missable in real life interesting as a photograph. That was one of the few good ones from my first trip over there, and seeing it in this new way helped me articulate what I'd simply been reacting to before. Going into my next trip, I knew better what to look for.

Q: What has this project taught you about finding beauty or meaning in the mundane? And how do you hope that resonates with people who view your work?

There's beauty all around us, or if not beauty then at the very least, a degree of interest. If you stop and take the time to observe something, any thing or any scene, you'll begin to take in more than whatever you initially focused on. Few of us, myself included, take the time to do this in our everyday lives and especially not while traveling and taking in so much newness all at once. This project helped me understand that, and more immediately it helped me see different sides of the places I visited in Japan by compelling me to wander down side streets and alleys seeking out vending machines. That's what I hope people take away from The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines — to slow down a little and try to take more in, especially while traveling. And I think it works with the book too; hell every time I look at it I discover new details I hadn't seen before.

Q: Do you have your eye on another everyday object or scene for a future project? What’s next in your creative exploration of the ordinary and overlooked, if any?

I have another book planned and I've started taking photographs for it and I'm about to shift that project into a higher gear. I'm keeping the subject matter mum for now but I'll say that it's very central to Vermont, where I grew up and live now, but I think there's also a degree of universality to it that non-Vermonters will take away too. It's going to be a much bigger book—more photos, more writing. And portraits! Because I'm less comfortable photographing people so I'd like to push myself to do it. People are a part of it.

Q: Finally, where else can we find you? What avenues or social links can you give us to check the rest of your work out?

I'm woefully bad at posting on social media and updating my website with new work but recently I've been making the effort to reform those ways. You can find my work, including The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines, at tannerbowden.com and more photos on Instagram. I also wrote a behind-the-scenes newsletter about the book making process on my Substack and I plan to do more writing there soon, too.