Photographic Works
I collect art centered on paintings.
Focusing on oil and acrylic paintings, along with three-dimensional works such as ceramics, I’ve been gradually collecting pieces I love.
I like photographic works too, but perhaps I never quite found the right one — or perhaps the “reproducibility” of the medium made them feel less scarce — either way, I had no photographs in my personal collection until now.
Even photographs I saw and liked at gallery exhibitions somehow never made it into my hands.
Ayaka Yamamoto
That’s when I visited this exhibition — the solo show by photographer Ayaka Yamamoto.
I was going to buy the photobook as a memento of the show, but then I heard a special edition would be sold at Daikanyama Photo Fair, so I went there.
There are many kinds of special editions, and this one comes with an actual photographic print.
Ayaka Yamamoto “We are Made of Grass, Soil, and Trees”
“We are Made of Grass, Soil, and Trees” is Ayaka Yamamoto’s first photobook, named after her solo show at Taka Ishii Gallery. The standard edition’s cover is the same as the one sold on Amazon below.
The image above is the special edition’s cover.
Featured Works
The book collects many of Ayaka Yamamoto’s works, including earlier pieces — photographs capturing women from various parts of the world.
Special Edition
The photobook-with-print special edition was published in three types, each in an edition of 10.
The cover carries a tipped-in plate different from the standard edition (with signature and edition number). I acquired two of the three types.
A: Untitled #137, Latvia, 2014
B: Untitled #81, France, 2013
C: Untitled #12, Estonia, 2010
Each print has beautiful printing quality — the kind of thing that makes you think, “I want to collect photographs!”
Even at their small size, the prints are meticulous, fine-grained, and refined.
I am completely satisfied with these captivating prints. Standard C-print output is nice too, but I’ve heard inkjet prints have better durability. I was genuinely surprised at how vividly the colors come through.
This may well be what turns me toward collecting photographs from now on.
Stock of the special edition photobook still appears to be available →here.
Getting It Framed
I put some care into framing them. After consulting a framer, I chose white mats and navy wood.
With generous margins, the frames turned out quite large (about 42 cm per side). Looking great!
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Ayaka Yamamoto
Born in Kobe in 1983. In 2006 she graduated from the Western Painting course, Department of Fine Art, Faculty of Art at Kyoto Seika University.
At university she initially majored in painting, but gradually shifted to performance works and video works using her own body. Her 2004 study-abroad experience in San Francisco marked the beginning of her photographic practice.
Photographing in situations where linguistic communication is difficult brought her, beyond the intrinsic nature of the photographic medium, all kinds of points of contact with others, and since then she has continued to make portraits — a mode of image-making that is at once violent and extraordinarily compelling.
Choosing sites “where already-known words and knowledge do not apply, and images beyond what her own eyelids have accumulated,” she has photographed in Finland and Estonia (starting in 2009), and then in Estonia (2010), Latvia (2011, 2012, 2014), France (2012, 2013), Russia (2014), Ukraine (2015), Bulgaria (2016), and Romania (2017).
Overview
“We are Made of Grass, Soil, and Trees”
Ayaka Yamamoto
288 x 260 mm | 72 pages
Contribution: Michiko Kasahara (Deputy Director, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Ishibashi Foundation)
Design: Daishiro Mori
Publisher: T&M Projects (2018)
ISBN: 978-4-909442-06-2
