Tomoko Yoneda’s The Parallel Lives of Others: Encounter with Sorge Spy Ring (2008) is a photographic series about places where members of the Richard Sorge spy ring secretly met in Japan and elsewhere. Yoneda photographed ordinary locations—such as Heian Shrine in Kyoto, Ueno Park, Nara Park, and Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel—in small, hazy black-and-white gelatin silver prints. The sites look unremarkable, but their titles connect them to the spies’ covert encounters and the hidden lives they led. 
Yoneda describes the spies’ secret existence as a “parallel life”: one that differed from the lives known to their families and friends. The blurred, fleeting quality of the photographs echoes the uncertainty of those clandestine meetings and asks viewers to bring historical knowledge to otherwise everyday scenes.