For a photographer, holidays are a hard one, particularly if documentary photography is your job, because it’s a holiday, not work…but everything needs to be documented, right? For me, and I know I’m not alone on this, the anxiety starts weeks, months, before departure with the question, “What cameras am I going to take?”. The answer usually starts with, “I’ll take one camera and one lens.”, but ends with, “I’ll take everything, just in case.”. 

For my latest and third trip to Japan, I narrowed my selection down to a relatively minimal two cameras and two lenses, a Sony A7IV and 40mm lens, and my Leica Q2 Monochrom, with which all the images here were taken. I used both combos extensively; however, a couple of weeks before leaving for Japan, I discovered something that sent my holiday documenting and journaling down a refreshing new path. 

The Kodak Memo Shot Era is a label printer, basically, with a built-in digital camera. You take a photograph and instantly print it onto a 5×7 cm sticky label. Over three weeks, I filled an entire A5 notebook, 190 pages, with nearly 600 beautiful, contrasty, lo-fi black-and-white images. I’ll publish much of the journal and unique snaps over the next few weeks.