masao yamamoto

• Benrido, Inc 2020
• Set of 6 multi colour collotype prints
  
• New

'The aesthetic power of the pictures of Yamamoto Masao (Japan, b. 1957) is unique. Refined, subtle and powerful at the same time. He succeeds to unfold the photographic medium into his own world, far off leading standards. The photo prints are small, sometimes even minuscule, and require a profound observation. The manual modifications by the artist provide an experimental look, with frayed edges and colour additions. His photographs seem to be marked by time, but that impression is the result of a balanced and accurate intervention by the artist. The technique of mixed media and the exceptional prints generate a close connection with the object. Yamamoto narrates no prefabricated story. He offers a glimpse into a harmonious world that is visible for everyone, but not perceived by everybody. For Yamamoto, harmony is the constant interaction between man and nature. Yamamoto’s work is anchored in that direct relationship with his environment.'
- Galley Fifty One

As part of Benrido’s mini-portfolio series, Yamamoto Masao mini-portfolio brings together a selection of well-known works focusing on his imagery of birds. Within a selection of six previously published images have been selected by the artist and printed in colour by the collotype printers at Benrido studio.

Set of 6 multi colour collotype prints printed by Benrido, Inc.

Print Size: 25.4 x 20.3cm. Case Size: 20.6 x 25.8 x 0.8cm


In the 1880s, the collotype printing process was introduced to Kyoto and in 1905 Benrido began producing collotypes. Collotype is one of the earliest forms of printing techniques and was invented in France in 1855 by Alphonse Poitevin as a method for photographic fine art printing.  Due to the high level of print and archival quality, it has since been used primarily as a way to reproduce and preserve Japan’s National Treasures and cultural properties. Today Benrido Collotype Atelier remains as one of only a few studios left in the world capable of producing fine colour collotype prints.

• IKKI Books 2023
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

• Iikki 2022
  
• Hardback, 2nd edition
  
• New
  

Sasanami is the result of a dialog between the photographer Masao Yamamoto and the musician and composer Akira Uchida initiated by IIKKI between October 2019 and August 2020. 

''Sasanami: Sound becomes waves and creates space, where a story is spun that transcends time and space, just like Noh. Something gentle in that space. Its presence is not definite, it simply exists there. I want to share with you the scene of how the individual and the space are connected.''

Hand-numbered 2nd edition of 1000 copies, with a digital download code for the music.  

• RM 2020
• Hardback, 2nd edition
• NEW
  

Born in 1957 in Gamagori, in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi, Yamamoto Masao is a photographer who began his art studies as an oil painter under the supervision of Goro Saito in his hometown. Yamamoto subsequently discovered that photography was the ideal medium for the theme that most interested him: images with the ability to evoke memories.

“Small Things in Silence” offers a perspective on twenty years of the career of one of Japan’s most important photographers. In the words of Yamamoto himself: “I try to capture moments that no one sees and make a photo from them. When I see them in print, a new story begins.”

• T&M 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

Yamamoto Masao lives in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in a house surrounded by forests over three thousand feet above sea level. His lifestyle matches his art, entirely devoted to capturing the “small things in silence” that life and nature offer his gaze.

When in 2013 we took Masao and his wife Reiko for the first time to the Ardèche, on the invitation of Annie and Bernard Mirabel, affinities became evident immediately.

The same love for nature and the ties with the mountain, not that far different from their life in Yamanashi: the same wooded hills on the horizon, the same lights in space in the evening garden. Since then there have been various visits, simply for the pleasure of it, but also to fill up this silent contract between the hosts and the guest: bringing a stone to the edifice that the Fabrique du pont d’Aleyrac has been building for years, inviting artists to work on the Ardèche.

Yamamoto wanted to meet people here and photograph them. Using small settings he depicted imaginatively what seemed important in their lives: the animals they raise, the countryside they live in.

ーー Didier Brouse

This book includes an unpublished text by Marie-Hélène Lafon, who was awarded the Renaudot Prize in 2020.

Text in English with a booklet in Japanese.

Beautifully signed copy.