/ 2025 / Analog / Photojournalism

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Jake Meadows, United Kingdom
• Date of Photograph
  May 17, 2024
• Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/jakemeadows.jpg/

Asakusa, Tokyo, May 2024.
A slow drizzle settles on Nakamise-dōri, yet the festival surges forward: shoppers compress into a living river; bearers bite down and heave the mikoshi until veins rise; bursts of saffron robes laugh through the crush; gilded altars sway past the five-story pagoda, its spire needling the blank sky. Each frame traces a different pulse of Sanja Matsuri—crowd, strain, joy, reverence—woven together by the gentle grain of Portra 400, which preserves the weight, effort, and shared rhythm of every shoulder beneath the shrine.