MASAO YAMAMOTO
BETWEEN CLOUDS By Rita Hart
MASAO YAMAMOTO
“I live everyday, feeling deities in all and sundry, trying to always be in appreciation of them. Perhaps this is the aesthetic of my life. And since photography for me is equivalent to the very basic living necessities, such as food and sleep, this aesthetic applies to that of my photography. Though I am not sure if this is any kind of ‘philosophy’... What originally had been produced in the process of my enjoying life though ‘the search after beauty’ was, at some point, sublimated into something worthy of presentation to you and other viewers.”
A Japanese maple leaf It turns to show its back It turns to show its front Before it is time to fall
The winds have died, but flowers go on falling; birds call, but silence penetrates each song.
Autumn’s first drizzle: How delightful, The nameless mountain.
The thief left it behind: the moon at my window.
Everything has its scale.
To kindle a fire, the autumn winds have piled a few dead leaves.
When all thoughts Are exhausted I slip into the woods And gather A pile of shepherd’s purse.
As the snow Engulfs my hut At dusk My heart, too Is completely consumed
First days of spring – the sky is bright blue, the sun huge and warm. Everything’s turning green. Carrying my monk’s bowl, I walk to the village to beg for my daily meal. The children spot me at the temple gate and happily crowd around, dragging to my arms till I stop. I put my bowl on a white rock, hang my bag on a branch. First we braid grasses and play tug-of-war, then we take turns singing and keeping a kick-ball in the air: I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing. Time is forgotten, the hours fly. People passing by point at me and laugh: “Why are you acting like such a fool?” I nod my head and don’t answer. I could say something, but why? Do you want to know what’s in my heart? From the beginning of time: just this! just this!
The plants and flowers I raised about my hut I now surrender To the will Of the wind
The thief left it behind: the moon at my window.
Like the little stream Making its way Through the mossy crevices I, too, quietly Turn clear and transparent.
How can I possibly sleep This moonlit evening? Come, my friends, Let’s sing and dance All night long.
For me a good photo is one that soothes. Makes us feel kind, gentle. A photo that gives us courage, that reminds us of good memories, that makes people happy
I must go there today – Tomorrow the plum blossoms Will scatter.
Once in a while I just let time wear on leaning against a solitary pine standing speechless, as does the whole universe! Ah, who can share this solitude with me?
“I like the idea that photographs are kept and looked at with affection”
“That is what gives them meaning.”
In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone befriended by trees and herbs. Too lazy to learn right from wrong, I laugh at myself, ignoring others. Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream, a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather. Living thus, I want for nothing, at peace with all the world.
Everything has its scale. You can print photographs to be any size you want. But everything has its appropriate size. My prints are all small, because I want to hold them in my hand. I want them to be objects. I believe Buddha is this size for a reason (big). The hardest is where to put the first one. My installation has no beginning. You can start at any print. Where you start is where the story begins. For me, the story grows around the first print installed. My photos are so small, sometimes you cant´s figure out what you´re looking at. Here is a mountain. A mountain in another mountain. In this picture, the bust of a woman. A woman is noit a sea. A woman is a mountain. That´s the idea. A soft cloud and a rose with thorns. A cross here. Another cross. A black mountain swallowing a white sea. In every place you go, there are details that most people miss. For exemple, a bird eating an insect, or an ant squashed by a child´s foot. Many things are happening but we simply don´t notice them. I try to capture them in my photos and bring them home. Then I print them. When I see the printed photograph, a new story presents itself.
Cherry blossoms petals falling Even the ones remained Will soon be falling.
The Lotus First blooming in the Western Paradise, The lotus has delighted us for ages. Its white petals are covered with dew, its jade green leaves spread out over the pond, And its pure fragrance perfumes the wind. Cool and majestic, it raises from the murky water. The sun sets behind the mountains But I remain in the darkness, too captivated to leave.
One moon, one careless finger pointing, are these two things or one?
“I let myself be drawn to a subject; the photograph is a record of my feelings in the moment.�
When spring arrives From every tree tip Flowers will bloom, But those children Who fell with last autumn’s leaves Will never return.
“My photos are so small, sometimes you cant´s figure out what you´re looking at.”
First blooming in the Western Paradise, The lotus has delighted us for ages. Its white petals are covered with dew, its jade green leaves spread out over the pond, And its pure fragrance perfumes the wind. Cool and majestic, it raises from the murky water. The sun sets behind the mountains But I remain in the darkness, too captivated to leave.
BIOGRAPHY Masao Yamamoto Yamamoto Masao, born 1957 in Gamagori City in Aichi Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese freelance photographer known for his small photographs, which seek to individualize the photographic prints as objects. Yamamoto began his art studies as a painter, studying oil painting under Goro Saito in his native city. He presently uses photography to capture images evoking memories. He blurs the border between painting and photography however, by experimenting with his printing surfaces. He dyes, tones (with tea), paints on, and tears his photographs. His subjects include still-lives, nudes, and landscapes. He also makes installation art with his small photographs to show how each print is part of a larger reality. INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS - 2005, PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, Portland - CRAIG KRULL GALLERY, Santa Monica - 2004, STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY, San Francisco - Nakazora, PDX, Portland - Nakazora, CRAIG KRULL GALLERY, Santa Monica - 2003 Nakazora, DANIELA FACCHINATO IMAGE GALLERY, Bologna, Italy - Nakazora, Chiesa dei SS.Jacopo e Filippo, Certaldo, Italy - Omizuao, YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY, New york - Nakazora, JACKSON FINE ART, Atlanta - Santoka, GALLERY SINCERITE, Toyohashi - 2002 Nakazora, S.K.JOSEFSBERG STUDIO, Portland
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
COLLECTIONS
- Japanese Photography 1970’s-1980’s, S.K.JOSEFSBERG STUDIO, Portland
- Museum Contemporary of Photography , Chicago
- 2000 ‘Chorus of Light’ Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection, High
- Philadelphia Museum of Art
Museum of Art, Atlanta - 1999 Modena per la Fotografia 1999 , Modena, ITALIA - HOLND FSTVL, AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND - 1998 “Waterproof ” EXPO’98 LISBOA - MEDIALOGUE Photography in Contemporary Japanese Art ‘98, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography - UNDER/EXPOSED, Stockholm - 1996 Ten Year Anniversary Exhibition, Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale - Contemporary Japanese Photography,JACKSON FINE ART, Atlanta - 1995 The 1st Tokyo International Photo Biennale, A Box of ” Ku” VII - A Box of ” Ku” VII, Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale - A Box of ” Ku” VII, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago - 1994 “Flower Studies” SHAPIRO GALLERY, San Francisco “intimate memories” A.O.I Gallery, Santa Fe - 1990 “SPIRAL Take Art Collection” Aoyama Spiral Gallery, Tokyo - 1988 FOTOFEST ‘88, Huston, U.S.A. - “New From Tokyo 11 Japanese Photographers”
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston - The International Center of Photography, New York - Center for Creative Photography - Princeton University Art Museum, NJ - Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA - Portland Art Museum, OR, USA
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS - 2003 Omizuao, Nazraeli Press, U.S.A. - 2003 Santoka, Harunatsuakifuyu Sousho , Japan - 2002 The Pass Of Green Leaves, Nazraeli Press, U.S.A. - 2001 Nakazora, Nazraeli Press, U.S.A. - 1998 A box of ku, Nazraeli Press, U.S.A.
ABOUT WORKS Most of his photographic works are in monochrome and its aged texture reminds us of “memories dropping out of someone’s drawers”. Snapshot sized, yet speechlessly beautiful pictures have been exhibited in groups of ten to several hundred spread across the wall, or sometimes placed in a small box. Tranquility around each photograph filled the entire space. Strangely, the existence of a single piece of art and a whole installation seemed to be equal. It recalls oriental and Japanese ideas about the relationships between the world and self. Western audiences pick up those essences and are the reason why his work is widely appreciated in the western world. It is clear that Yamamoto’s new attempt is in “KAWA=Flow”. Unlike previous exhibitions, he mounted framed pictures one by one. This time the audience is able to experience each one individually, instead of viewing the collective entity. Kawa (river) is not a geographical border but is instead viewed as a sentimental divide. Lines that divide life and death are examples of this. Kawa also implies the flow of our on-going life. The artist experiences the flow when he releases the shutters and takes a picture. Yamamoto has seen and experienced thousands of rivers. The images he captured remind the audience of an existence of a river that flows from current life to future life. When the audIence looks at the world, (which is the individual according to oriental thoughts,) they realize that both conscious and unconscious thoughts all flow like a river. Framed individually, his work can be similar to the poetry style of HAIKU. HAIKU brings flow to the poetry world by featu-ring seasonal words and capturing a vivid moment. Yamamoto’s photographic works present a moment in a similarly beautiful and momentous flow. The world is beautiful and ever changing; only when we stop at this river do we notice the flow.
INTERVIEW Japanese photographer Masao Yamamoto has intrigued me since I first held several of his tiny energy-charged photos in my hands at a photography festival in California in 2003, and I could not leave without taking three of these precious objects home with me (at a price I could barely afford at the time). Five years later, those same photos float on the wall in my home where I can see them every day, in all kinds of light, and they still exert that same emotional pull on me every time I stop to look at them. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris in 2007 during an opening at Galerie Camera Obscura, and we communicated verbally through an interpreter. But what was much more memorable was the way he silently placed eleven of his small photos on a glass table and started to arrange and re-arrange them into a kind of visual haiku. Each slight shuffle changed the poetry and context, and the possibilities seemed almost limitless. So, I was delighted to discover this brief video interview with Masao Yamamoto made by Laetitia BerthomĂŠ and Fabien Bosdedore. Colleen Leonard, who has been contributing to Lens Culture, first pointed it out to us a couple days ago, and then, generously, provided this English translation.
Masao Yamamoto is a photographer, born in 1957 in Japan. He studied fine arts and painting before finding his expression through photography. Since his debut in the 80’s he has explored the emotional power of the intimate images that each one of us keeps with us as amulets.
When you started his passion for photography?
Why exposes your photos this way?
In the past, when I was a child, I collected insects. I have a tendency to collect
I construct a story by hanging several small photos. I don’t do it chronologically.
things. As an adult, instead of killing the insects, I began to take photos of them to
Sometimes I start with the end, sometimes with the middle, I never know where I
collect the images.
will start. I attach one, then another, and then a third. Even I have no idea of the story it tells before I start hanging. It’s only in the theoretic hanging that the sense
How do you start shooting?
appears to me.
When I photograph, I start out with an open mind. If I start out with a precise idea of what I want to photograph, I might miss an interesting event or object. So, I begin with an open mind and try to photograph all kinds of objects.
When you photographed do you already know what are you gonna shoot? In fact it’s as if I’m climbing a staircase and at the same time picking up some lovely stones. Even if I had decided to only take the white stones, if I see a black one I like
Why your images look like this?
I’ll take it too. It’s the same thing when I’m hanging.
As you can see, my photos are small and seem old. In fact, I work so that they’re like that. I could wait 30 years before using them, but that’s impossible. So, I must age them. I take them out with me on walks, I rub them with my hands, this is
Where do you inspire? Long ago, there was a man named Ryokan, who was a calligrapher and
what gives me my desired expression. This is called the process of forgetting or the
a poet. I have an enormous amount of respect for him. In one of his Haikus he
production of memory. Because in old photos the memories are completely ma-
describes simply the movement of a leaf trembling as it falls. But in reality, this poem
nipulated and it’s this that interests me and this is the reason that I do this work.
can be interpreted in several ways. For example the falling leaf could be a metaphor for life, the right side up, the bad, and the reverse side, the good. From this simple
Why you take small pictures? If I take small photos, it’s because I want to make them into the matter of
natural phenomenon he speaks of much deeper things. I find this remarkable. I would like to take these kinds of photos.
memories. And it’s for this reason that I think the best format is one that is held in the hollow of the hand. If we can hold the photo in our hand, we can hold a memory in our hand. A little like when we keep a family photo with us. And it’s for this reason that I think the best format is one that is held in the hollow of the hand.
What is a good picture for you? For me a good photo is one that soothes. Makes us feel kind, gentle. A photo that gives us courage, that reminds us of good memories, that makes people happy.
Articles the village voice (December 25 - 2001) MasaoYamamoto As in his previous shows, Yamamoto works through accumulation, grouping several photos within a single frame or scattering hundred across the wall. Individual pictures are poetic but slight: a lizard curling across a smooth stone, a sliver red flower in a vase. But together these images evoke a vast, vivid world of sensual pleasure that the viewer enters delight. Becausa Yamamoto isn´t concerned with the preciousness of this photos, he´s happy to slip them into a sprawling stream-of-consciousness arrangement (the one here includes 282 pieces) or lease them loose in a box for viewers to shuffle throughout and mae their own chance associations. Less random, but no less seductive, is the 18-foo-long scroll book at the front desk that Yamamoto just published with Nazraeli Press, The perfect last-minute holiday extravagance for your favorite aesthete. Through January 19, Yancey Richadson Gallery. 535, West 22nd Street 646-230-9610. (Alentti).
Art in America
the new york Times
(May 2002)
(January 7 - 2002)
Masao Yamamoto at Yancey Richardson Masao Yamamoo uses the Buddhist term “Nakazora” for the tiltle of this series of photographs. The word means, among other things, “empty air”, “hollow”, “a state when feet do much the ground” and “the inability to decide between two things”.
Masao Yamamoto KAWA = Flow Exhibition Most of his photographic works are in monochrome and its aged texture reminds us of “memories dropping out of someone’s drawers”. Snapshot sized, yet speechlessly
Applied to these assemblages of small, often blurry, unframed photographs covering the
beautiful pictures have been exhibited in groups of ten to several hundred spread across
wall in loosely placed groupings, nakazora might refer either to the images themselves or to
the wall, or sometimes placed in a small box. Tranquility around each photograph filled
the way they are installed. Some are found images and some have been crated by the artist.
the entire space. Strangely, the existence of a single piece of art and a whole installa-
Each one offers a fleeting glimpse of landscape or interior. Figures, when they appear, tend
tion seemed to be equal. It recalls oriental and Japanese ideas about the relationships
to be located in the distance. Most of the photographs are black and white, although there
between the world and self. Western audiences pick up those essences and are the
are a few with flashes of color.
reason why his work is widely appreciated in the western world.
It is clear that the spaces between the images are as important as he images themselves.
It is clear that Yamamoto’s new attempt is in “KAWA=Flow”. Unlike previous ex-
Sprinkled on the wall with a definite rhythm, they are intended, as the gallery release states,
hibitions, he mounted framed pictures one by one. This time the audience is able to
to serve as visual haikus. The various-sized photographs bring us in and out of focus, oscillat-
experience each one individually, instead of viewing the collective entity. Kawa (river)
ing between deep and close perspective, and force us to linger on the white spaces of the wall
is not a geographical border but is instead viewed as a sentimental divide. Lines that
to which they are rather tenuously attached with linen tape o foam core. This arrangement
divide life and death are examples of this. Kawa also implies the flow of our on-going
encourages a shif-ting perception where the eye does not rest any one place for very long.
life. The artist experiences the flow when he releases the shutters and takes a picture.
Some images have more memorable content than others. In one photo, flower pots have
Yamamoto has seen and experienced thousands of rivers. The images he captured
been arranged in a grid formation on stained cement. Another presents a red flower in the
remind the audience of an existence of a river that flows from current life to future
snow. Yet another focused on swans in formation on a lake. Compositional complexity seems
life. When the audience looks at the world, (which is the individual according to
largely beside the point. Many of the images convey an emptiness - there are numerous
oriental thoughts,) they realize that both conscious and unconscious thoughts all
photographs of floating clouds, empty horizons and the almost uniform surface of slightly
flow like a river.
rippling water.
BY Munehisa Masao
BY Elenor Heartney
ARTnews
the new york times
(January 2005)
(March - 2008)
Stephen Wirtz / San Francisco
Masao Yamamoto
Japonese photographer Masao Yamamoto gave this show the title “´é”, the Roman
On the face of it, the work of the Japanese photographers Masao Yamamoto, Miyako
Aalphabet´s phonetic equivalent to a Japanese character used to mean either “picture”
Ishiuchi and Yukio Oyama would seem to have little in common. Since the late 1980’s,
or “understanding”. The work of Yamamoto showed embodied that dual meaning,
Mr. Yamamoto, 42, has been adding small, exquisitely minimalist images of whatever
both piece by piece and cumulatively.
catches his fancy to his ever-expanding “Box of Ku” series. Ms. Ishiuchi, born a few
On entering the gallery, viewers encountered a large wall with loosely scattered tiny
years after World War II, favors the oversize grainy prints and gritty subject matter
prints, reach attached to the surface unframed. Yamamoto knew that everyone would
- scarred bodies and abandoned buildings in her work of the last decade or so - that
feel the impulse to connect the pictures narratively, lyrically, or conceptually. But the
characterize the pictures of many photographers in the late 1960’s and 70’s who pre-
photographs gently, unyieldingly resisted all such effors.
ferred e “arebure,” or grainy-blurry. In essence, this movement was a powerful rejection
The images included shots of cranes in flight, female nudes, a lizard on a rock, and
of thenprevailing photographic conventions. Mr. Oyama, 37, a graduate of the Japan
the head of a swimmer in the ocean, far from shore. Several of the photographs held
Photographic Academy in Tokyo, where he now teaches, focuses on the formalist face
their subjects at such a distance and low level of definition, or were hung so far above
of nature, a formalism that the “are·bure” school had rejected earlier.
one´s sight line, as to frustrate the eye.
As varied as their photographic styles are, all three share a passion for recording
Yamamoro enhances the mystery of all his untitled images by distressing and toning
the traces left by time. “Vestiges” is the aptly titled exhibition of their work at Sepia
he prunes to make them appear timeworn and bereft of context. Some have the appael
International Inc. in Chelsea. Ms. Ishiuchi began to take close-ups of the bodies of
of random snapshots, uncluding one of the dirt female nudes looked as if they might
the very old in the early 1990’s.
have originated in a genteel album of antique erotica.
Time is invisible, Ms. Ishiuchi said about that series, but it becomes visible in the
A few images carried a faint anachronistic shock: one that showed parallel dark
human body as it ages. As the body ages, few if any escape some kind of scarring, and
streaks running down a while wall suggested some forgotten document of conceptual
for Ms. Ishiuchi photographing scars was the logical next step. Tangible reminders
or performance art. But the pictures that linger in the mind do so because they strike
of past illnesses or accidents, scars are like old photographs, she is fond of saying. In
a marvelous balance of lyric and graphic power.
her monumental.
by Kenneth Baker
BY MARGARETT LOKE
FOAM MAGAZINE
L.A MAGAZINE
(February 2006)
(July 2008)
Flashing orange lights, a squeal of breaks followed by the noise of smashing
This is photography as environment, as bodybuilder, as braggart, as empire. But then,
glass. In the twilight of a late-December afternoon, the Amsterdam City Council
so is a lot of art these days. And size does matter. Some of Mr. Gursky’s photographs
is emptying the large bottle-bank containers in the street. It’s a daily occurrence in
would be entirely uninteresting in a more “normal” size, as would some of Thomas
Amsterdam and it doesn’t normally make anyone turn to look. Artist Masao Yamamoto
Ruff’s more-than-life-size port raits. lnliated to unlikely dimensions, they encourage
(b. 1957 in Gamagori, Japan), busy installing his latest exhibition, immediately reaches
a (possibly unconscious) comparison
for his Nikon F100 camera, walks over to the gallery window and starts taking a range
with habitual perceptions of one’s own body and surroundings and thereby
of shots of the ungainly truck.
achieve a kind of overbearing authority. The movies, even though their conventions
The gallery staff watch the artist in amazement. They’ve never taken any notice before
are too familiar to be remarkable by now, must also derive some of their power by
of the emptying of the bottle bank into the body of a truck. If anything the racket
displacing us to a world at once more intimate (being too big for our actual distance
accompanying the event annoyed them. That changes, however, the moment Masao
from it) and more imposing. The only picture approaching truly huge dimensions at
Yamamoto starts to photograph it. Conscious observation or looking at a subject from
Houk is an 8-by-6-foot blowup of Walker Evans’s “Penny Picture Display, Savannah,
a different angle can produce fresh insights. It may even co ntribute to the enrichment
Ga.,” a nuanced commentary on
of our personal lives and in that respect Yamamoto’s work offers a helping hand in
photography as a window on the world and on the nature of commercial portraiture
various ways.
in the 1930’s. Although· Evans must have approved the blowup, because it was shown
To Masao Yamamoto, photography is a way of taking the world in; he consumes life by
at the Museum of Modern Art in his 1971 retrospective, it is transformed into a poser,
photographing it. So it seems natural that much of his work takes his home environ-
a slice of propaganda wallpaper. More-is
ment in Japan as its subject. The artist lives at the foot of Mount Fuji, an hour’s drive
more, but it isn’t everything.
from Tokyo. This mountain (3,776 m. or 12,388 ft.) has one of the most beautiful
The contemporary-art scene is almost as heavily invested in epic dimensions- Richard
symmetrical peaks in the world, is surrounded by lakes, waterfalls and virgin forests,
Serra, Christo, almost any installation - as the pharaohs were, but then the rest of
and boasts an enormous variety of mountain plants. This environment has inspired a
society has- a lot at stake there, too. Skyscrapers threaten to cast shadows over olties.
collection of delightful little palm-sized photos of dreamy landscapes, birds, elegant
Houses have so many rooms, people have to invent uses for them. Light-weight trucks
women, skies, waterfalls or trees, most of them taken from unusual viewpoints that
masquerade as sports cars, television
result.
screens rival.
BY SARA MASAO
BY VICKI GOLDBERG
the new yorker (January 7 - 2002) Masao Yamamoto The Japonese artist has named his show of stained and worn snapshots “Nakazora”, after the Buddhist term for “the space between sky and earth, the place where birds, etc., fly.” The images, more than two hundred taped to the gallery wall to form a constellation, are focussed and specific. But these archetypal subjects are ambiguous enough (a caged polar bear, a poised calico cat, a wide shadow across a narrow path) to generate an emotional response. Through January 1, Yancey Richadson Gallery. 535, West 22nd Street 646-230-9610
First edition 2011 Edited by Udo Kittelmann, nationalgalerie, Saaliche zu Berlim Book design by Masao Yamamoto, Rita Hart Translation of Botho Straus Text by Ryokan Haiku poetry Production and printing by seriesexpresso, lda All rights reserved Rita Serpa de Vasconcelos Hart Phone (00351) 96 539 07 23 www.rita-hart.com www.behance.net/ritahart Biographic information published by Elisava Bibliographic data is avaible on the Internet at http://www.yamamotomasao.jp ISBN 777–0–000777–777–1 Printed in Portugal