ZEN FOTO GALLERY

“Gonta is gone” – the title of Yang Seung-Woo’s afterword for his 2026 publication “You’re There and I’m Here” announces the death of the main subject and co-creator of the series, but also changes the context of the work.
Yang Seung-Woo originally met Gonta in 1998 when he was photographing in Shinjuku and slept on cardboard to catch a few hours of sleep. Gonta, actually homeless, was sleeping next to him. They became friends, with Yang taking photos of Gonta and Gonta sharing poems he wrote on scraps of cardboard and paper.
“You’re There and I’m Here” presents Yang’s photos and Gonta’s poems (including English translations), tracing nearly twenty years of their friendship in which Gonta mostly continued to sleep rough.
This new edition includes works originally published in 2006 and 2011 in out-of-print photobooks, as well as previously unreleased photographs.

“We used to say we’d keep this friendship until one of us died. That ending came way sooner than I ever imagined […]
He never had a smartphone, so when he wanted to reach me, he called from a payphone or sent a postcard.
When I wanted to find him, I went looking or him in Kabukicho during the time he was there, and later in Kawasaki when he rented a room. In the last ten years, I could see his strength slowly fading each time we met. Unlike me, Gonta had always been a faithful writer. But his letters started arriving less frequently, and eventually even his New Year’s cards stopped coming back.”
― from Yang Seung-Woo’s afterword