Masao Yamamoto Oregonian review

Review: Masao Yamamoto at PDX Contemporary Art
Brian Libby
March 27, 2009

Masao Yamamoto

Viewing photography, one assumes the pictures will be framed, or at least hanging on the wall. But this method, however obvious, is a relatively new one for venerable Japanese photographer Masao Yamamoto.

In previous shows Yamamoto has treated his photos as if they were objects or portions of an installation as much as images. Printed snapshots have been presented loosely and informally in a box, with viewers allowed to hold the pictures and shuffle them in any order. Many photos were deliberately creased and stained to evoke a sense of age and memory. In other cases, Yamamoto's pictures were clustered together as quasi-collages.

Before taking the photographs in his exhibit "KAWA = FLOW" at PDX Contemporary Art, the photographer decided the presentation of images was getting in the way of his concentration. And in Yamamoto's work particularly, there is a crucial, palpable sense of an artist completely enveloped in a sense of place. He needed to rekindle that meditative, holistic sense of place that comes through in his work. So while viewers may be disappointed being no longer able to physically hold the pictures in this show, Yamamoto's renewed attention to pure image-making pays off. These are subtly but unmistakably gorgeous pictures.

Yamamoto, 52 and based in Japan, has exhibited all over the world, including galleries in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Amsterdam. His work is included in permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography in New York and Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others.

True to that pedigree, "KAWA = FLOW" pulls off a deft balancing act. Black-and-white pictures of snow on trees, waterfalls cascading or a bird flying in the distance show intricate detail. Individual tree branches can be discerned amid the snowy whiteness, for example, in "#1550" (all his pictures are numbered), or in shrubbery covering a gently rolling hill in "#1548."

Even with this intricacy, Yamamoto's works retain a delicate softness, as if the scenes had been airbrush-painted rather than photographed. Perhaps that's because the artist originally trained as a painter or because Yamamoto works with a traditional 35 mm film camera and silver-gelatin printing.

The artist deftly uses darkness in his pictures to evoke a spiritual quality in which the light acts as a kind of unspoken salvation. In "#1527," he portrays a beach in high contrast so that ocean whitewater seems to emerge magically out of the void. "#1553" views a grove of trees clustered around a white vanishing point that is as bright as a spotlight piercing an otherwise windowless room. These serene, poetic images aren't as obvious as postcards despite the pretty scenery, yet one feels surrounded by the world Yamamoto forges.

"KAWA = FLOW," through Saturday, March 28, at PDX Contemporary Art, 925 N.W. Flanders St. Hours: Tuesday-