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"Cosplay in America" Book Release Party (Part 1) - Interview with Ejen & Tune in Tokyo

@ ROYAL/T, CULVER CITY, CA

We jumped into the book release party of "Cosplay in America".

"Cosplay in America" is the photo book by Ejen Chuang, a LA-based photographer. He traveled across the US for a couple months, attended comic-cons and anime expos to take photo of American cosplayers.

From over 1500 photos, he selected about two hundreds of them, and nicely decorated onto one book in both English and Japanese.

Today, he was having the book release party at Royal/T, Culver City. The music was brought by Tune in Tokyo.

YokosoNews shot some video interviews of Ejen, Greg and Del from Tune in Tokyo, and cosplayers on-site.

 

More video is now available.

 

Ejen Chuang, the photographer & author

"Cosplay in America"

Ejen is known photographer in LA for his Twitter account among Los Angeles photographers. But its followers didn't know about this project.

One day in 2009, he decided to use his credit card to its limit to execute his idea: compiling the pictures of cosplay in the US.

He packed up his gear, traveled around the country, spent 5 months, took 1600 cosplayers, and made it onto a book.

This would be the first photo book about American cosplayers. It's exciting.

 

I, Katz, know that there are many cosplayers in America. People upload their pictures on the various websites. But surprisingly, there was no photography book about American cosplayers published in the US.

You just don't want to satisfy by uploading the pics onto the web. Now, online photo sharing is easy. But you will appreciate the quality of photobook once you see and "touch" by yourself.

It's an art form of the moment captured within a split second. Through the photo book, the experience of flipping the page gives you completely different experience from seeing them on computer display.

For more information about the photo book, log-onto www.cosplayinamerica.com

 

Tune in Tokyo

Tune in Tokyo is JPop music group in Los Angeles. We shot some video interview of Greg and Del.

Tune in Tokyo is the resident at 2nd Street Jazz in Little Tokyo, Downtown LA. You get to see them on every 3rd Thursday of the month.

 

When I used to live in LA before 2007, I stopped by at the 2nd Street Jazz to listen to my jazz musicians' friend to play their songs. They were more strictly jazzy music.

However, last year, when I visted LA again, I passed by the 2nd Street Jazz, and saw many cosplayers hanging outside of 2nd Street Jazz.

Later, I learned about Tune in Tokyo, and checked them out once.

In early 2000s, only Japanese were organizing this kind of dace party such as Tokyo Nights. But it's very delightful to see more non-Japanese DJs and artists starts collaborate and appreciate J-music and other Asian musics.

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Continue to "Cosplay in America" Book Release Party (Part 2) - Interviews

 

Katz Ueno
As the Editor-in-chief & Producer of YokosoNews, Katz wants to show Japan to the rest of the world. Read more ยป