Yamamoto Masao: Ambrotypes
Untitled (AM #14), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Written by Makenna Karas
Photo Edited by Lyz Rider
There are layers to every moment, levels of perception that allow some things to stay while keeping others out. Our minds shift and contort everything we see, experience, and feel, perpetually manipulating how we perceive the world. We expose certain things while letting others fall to the shadows, to the periphery of our lives.
Untitled (AM #25), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Cameras do the same. Through contrast, exposure, shadows, and light, they pick and choose what to reveal and cast away. They are, in that way, extrapolated versions of our psyches, versions that Japanese artist Yamamoto Masao works intimately with in his latest exhibition, “Ambrotypes.” On display at the Yancey Richardson Gallery from November 16 through January 6, 2024, the exhibit is the product of Yamamoto using the collodion process, a technique from the mid-19th century that requires working quickly with a wet, coated surface to reveal an image. Specifically, Yamamoto produces ambrotypes, or the intentionally underexposed negatives of that image on glass, lending a unique contrast to the series.
Untitled (AM #63), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
This intentional lack of exposure gives each image its eerie, almost reverent glow. Immersed in a background of blackness, each object appears to be suspended within a vacuum, divorced from distraction. This isolated effect allows Yamamoto to excavate the beauty of small, gentle things that might otherwise go overlooked, inviting viewers to “[peer] into a different world through a small window…an accidental, unknown world.”
Untitled (AM #60), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Steeped in appreciation for the natural world, from the naked female body to stark visuals of birds and flowers, Yamamoto reveals subtle moments of profound elegance that seduce the eye into submission. In an instant, you find yourself falling into his world, a world of precision that births devotion for the gentle occurrence of a bird greeting the open arms of a flower or the silhouette of a body standing in parallel with the starkly contrasted figure of a bird.
Untitled (AM #16), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Within that world, you see a woman sleeping on a bed of leaves in #16, resting in a state of naked, submissive unity with the earth. Much like the figure standing at ease with the bird, her bright flesh juxtaposes the blackened background yet blends with the leaves that envelop her. There is a sweet suggestion of being held by the earth, cradled by its living embrace, kept safe from the abyss of the shadows that fall around her.
Untitled (AM #64), 2023 © Yamamoto Masao. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Keep falling, and you will arrive at #64, a shot that stains a small, intimate moment with permanence. The background is black, pulling the leaves into it to reveal the brightened aspect of a small bird resting. There is no motion or action but a still aura of peace that grabs the eye. Yamamoto plays with memory here, daring the viewer to pay attention, to pay homage to an otherwise overlooked occurrence. This reckoning for the audience to bathe for a moment in the immediate elegance of the natural world runs throughout the exhibit, falling like water over the photographs in a humble endeavor to cleanse the eye that Yamamoto executes with brilliant grace.
