Art and River Bank
Closes in 10 days
Do you know where you are? If not, Yoshifusa Yamane might shed some philosophical light with the delicate abstract photographs he is showing at the gallery Art and River Bank (www.art-and-river-bank.net). Titled "You Are Out of You," his prints were created by leaving the shutter open as the camera was rotated 360 degrees. By doing so, Yamane gives us the unusual perspective of the complete environment the camera inhabits, as opposed to what simply stood before its lens. Naturally the prints are blurred, making their locations unrecognizable, yet a sense of landscape still lingers as light -- not the form-seeking eye -- transforms paddy fields and crowded city streets into horizontal bars of color.
Carefully exposed to produce a world of light pastels, the results seem more like beautiful meditative watercolors, devoid of the medium's usual tweediness, than actual photographs. Inspired by the ecological approach to perception of American psychologist J.J Gibson that maintains we perceive because we actively choose to, Yamane's abstract images are very much part of the new school of photography that is more concerned with the medium than the subject. Lost in action, just like us, the swirling camera acts as the eye trying to perceive. That the artist also considers this show an installation as opposed to a photographic exhibition -- due to a background soundtrack generated from data that records light's luminosity -- further separates this show from the purely photographic. Though the impact of the soundtrack is questionable, and traditional photographers might wonder how far blurriness in photography go, Yamane's images do contain something. At first there appears to be nothing to see in them, yet afterward their stillness lingers in the mind.
