“The mechanical retina on my fingertips” is how Suda named his Minox camera that held him in thrall from 1991 to 1992. The Minox camera is popularly known as a spy camera - It fits in the pocket with a shutter release as light as the blink of an eye. The resulting images developed from 8x11 mm negatives are grainy and have a flat perspective. Suda comments that “no other camera ever accompanied my activities so closely.”

Issei Suda (b. 1940 – d. 2019) had a long and celebrated career concentrating on street scenes. He discovered the random beauty of textures and patterns in nature, and of ordinary people in their everyday habitat. Throughout his career, Suda demonstrated an innate ability to show people as latent participants existing in the highly charged space between the ordinary and the extraordinary.