Threatening birds perched on the top of a hill, a small boy being swallowed by a giant rock, a faceless train operator…

During the four years that he lived in Japan, Canadian photographer Nicolas St-Pierre spent countless hours exploring on foot the streets and back alleys of Tokyo. Almost every day, he was stopped dead in his own tracks by the unexpected sight of something that did not belong to the scene or by the deafening silence of something that cried out to be there.

Despite all the time and efforts that he had invested to learn Japanese and acquaint himself with local culture, he was never able to completely shake off the impression that he had set foot in a strange land.

The photographs presented in "Where Have the Birds Gone" constitute the photographer's own attempt at rendering the sense of alienation and unease that he felt while living in Japan and which will be so familiar to those who visit the country first the time.

In 2021, this book was awarded the URBAN Book Award in Trieste, Italy.