The itinerary was etched not on paper, but in the sole of a worn shoe: Tokyo through Vienna, then onwards to Paris. It became the framework for a relentless, month-long geometry of movement across a continent, a visual diary bound by the hours just preceding sunrise.
The day, invariably, would begin around 5 AM. This hour—still, cold — was deliberately chosen. It is the world's breath held, the fragile meniscus between the slumber of night and the brutalist awakening of commerce. To walk these quiet streets was to watch life, in each city, not merely begin, but unfurl.
Every city possessed its own distinct, almost tactile, character at this hour. There was the hushed reverence of Tokyo, where the first, solitary figures emerged like ghosts from the neon canyons, giving way to the smooth, efficient rush of the earliest commuters—a precise, organized energy. Then the imperial chill of Vienna, where the grand, baroque facades of the Ringstrasse seemed to stand in silent, dignified judgement of the first tram grinding along its rails. Finally, the atmospheric density of Paris, the pale light catching the zinc rooftops.
This transition—the slow, creeping accumulation of people going to work, the intensifying drumbeat of traffic, the collective, surging rush and energy—became the singular subject of the lens.
The instruments of this pursuit were the Leica M EV1 and the uncompromising clarity of the Leica M11 Monochrom. Used with a variety of lenses. They were perfectly suited to capturing the silence before the noise.