The Photographer Immortalising Tokyo’s Taxi Drivers

He named this series Who’s Driving Tokyo?—photographer Oleg Tolstoy is fascinated by the Japanese capital’s taxi drivers, who are often sophisticated and who tend to remain impassive throughout journeys, exchanging very few words with their passengers. ‘The formality of the situation is fascinating: drivers wear clean-cut suits and white gloves, car doors open automatically, and they never expect a tip’, the photographer explains on his website.

Behind-the-scenes workers

To capture these images, Oleg Tolstoy spent eleven nights in the lively, eclectic districts of Shibuya and Shinjuku. Through the windscreen, the viewer sees the drivers, deep in concentration—or perhaps dreams?—and also passengers, often engrossed in their phones. This series allows viewers to observe the faces that passengers tend to forget, thus paying homage to these behind-the-scenes workers.

Who’s Driving Tokyo? (2018), a series by photographer Oleg Tolstoy, is available on his website.