NEW VITAMIN BOYS

New Vitamin Boys — Masashi Urashiba

“Watching the flamboyant tree’s petals fall in full bloom, I was reminded of when I first began photographing boys 13 years ago. The boys in Taiwan taught me that everyone lives in different circumstances, each overcoming their own obstacles in their own way.” — Masashi Urashiba

Since there are 13 types of vitamins, who says there’s only one kind of boy?

Osaka-born, Taipei-based photographer Masashi Urashiba (Mashi) has long explored themes of gender, body, and identity through portraiture. New Vitamin Boys gathers his radiant images of young men in Taiwan, captured among neon signs, chaotic streets, and familiar urban rhythms, where individuality shines as brightly as sunlight or flash.

This compact photobook expands on Vitamin Boys (2014), a self-published zine once dedicated to his younger self, who struggled with gender identity. In Taiwan, Mashi found warmth, humor, and diversity encounters that gave him strength “just like vitamins.”

Lively, passionate, gentle, playful, beautiful, these portraits remind us that uncertainty is part of growth, and freedom is found in living openly.

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Language: Japanese, English, Chinese
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 112 pages
Book Size: 93 × 127 mm
ISBN: 9789860621730
Limited edition of 500