London photographer, Marco Bettoni, has created a typology of taxi signs that take on other worldly feel–futuristic and slightly surreal.

The series, Tokyo Lights, is “a suite of urban nocturnes made by photographing the illuminated signs on the roofs of Tokyo taxis. Each sign stands out against the darkness, a distinct object, strange to us if not to a Japanese public. Often it is reflected, doubled, by the shiny black roof below it. Bettoni obtained these images with considerable agility, and sometimes risk as he leapt into the traffic to obtain a particular example. But in the glowing images of the light boxes which Bettoni has made from these photographs the traffic is completely stilled, absent. He introduces a meditative calm into what we know is an urban frenzy.”