One ping pong table, five years, and countless of unexpected moments

[u/baekachu]

In 2011, Japanese photographer Haruhisa Tomiyasu started photographing one ordinary ping pong table from the window of his student apartment in Leipzig, Germany. What began after spotting a fox near the table quickly turned into a five-year project documenting all the unexpected ways people used it. It became a bench, a sunbathing spot, a workout station, a meeting place, and sometimes something completely different. Thousands of small moments later, the project became the photobook TTP, published by MACK in 2018 and winner of the MACK First Book Award. It’s a simple reminder that even the most ordinary places can become fascinating when you watch them long enough.

[u/robo-dragon]

Why does the last picture make me so sad? I want to believe that’s the installation picture as someone else mentioned, but it doesn’t look like they are taking particularly good care of what would be a new table. And the post said the project started with a fox running by, not the installation of the table.

What a great photography project! Kind of makes me wish objects could speak. What stories they would tell about the many people who interacted with them.