Tomoki Imai remembers well the turning point in his life when he decided to become a professional photographer. Already an aspiring film director at the Tokyo University of the Arts, the Hiroshima-native was turned onto the raw and trigger-happy cityscape and portrait snapshots of self-styled photo "genius" Nobuyoshi Araki.

"Some of the photos just looked plain ordinary and not even pretty," recalls Imai, 37. "And I thought wow, that's just great."

But unlike the flamboyant, outspoken media guru that inspired Imai (and generations of other wannabe-photographers at the height of the late-'90s digital-camera boom), Imai unleashed his equally eccentric creative drive with a much more low-key approach, capturing almost purposely, it seems, only the most conceivably mundane objects of daily life, be it trees, automobiles, concrete walls, forests or empty roads.