Amongst the chaos of urban life floats a nude woman, flies a lone bird, and flows a constant serenity unknown to contemporary life yet instinctively present in the deepest part of the human soul. Masao Yamamoto is a Japanese photographer known for his small, stained images of nature and women that evokes a sense of chrysalism or beschaulich.
Yamamoto’s photographs are often small, so miniscule that one can hold the print in their hands. Although Yamamoto’s original reason to use small photographs was for monetary concerns, his small photographs created an intimate viewing experience: the viewer must step closer in order to examine the subject of the photograph, thus analyzing the print individually in an intimate space for reflection and pondering.
Not only are his photographs small, Yamamoto’s prints are often made to appear aged with stains and creases, implying that they are the results of passage of time and the remnants of fleeting memory. At the same time, as photographs cease the clock hand to preserve a second into the forever, Yamamoto’s photography also suggests eternity in an impermanent world.
The small size and aged texture of his photographs enrapture the viewer to reflect on the preciousness in between the bodies of women, the wings of birds, or the swaying leaves of saplings. The preciousness is the sense of stillness in Yamamoto’s photographs, an inanimacy that brings quiet peace.
His nude female body photography captures women at their most natural and elegant.
His nature photography captures the vitality of floras and faunas while instilling a sense of harmony and tranquillity undisturbed by human’s boisterous city life.
Masao Yamamoto preserves the fleeting, calm, and beautiful life in the natural world, away from urban mayhem, into the eternity of photography. As we view his small prints up close, we are transferred into his world, where we are one with nature, in serenity.
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