Yoshiyuki Yatsuda’s Unforgettable Suburban Landscapes

Yoshiyuki Yatsuda’s ongoing series Unforgettable is the result of happenstance; ‘this series didn’t start with a special concept or message to convey,’ writes the photographer. Instead, shooting takes place when a certain sense is triggered by a certain environment.

Born in 1972, Yoshiyuki Yatsuda is a graphic designer by trade. In 2017 however, he began working as a photographer alongside his practice with the design studio Surface & Architecture.

Unremarkable but unforgettable

Unforgettable is a minute documentation of the suburbs: garage doors, parked cars, trees in bloom, restaurant facades, and rusted signage, all imbued with a timeless quality. The title of the series may appear as paradoxical: at first it seems as though there is nothing remarkable or unique about the landscapes captured by Yoshiyuki Yatsuda.

However, according to the photographer, ‘there was a strong personality that was unforgettable. The superficial brightness of a deserted restaurant, the building showing an excessively self-imposing landlord, suspicious and attractive store decoration…’ What Yoshiyuki Yatsuda captures is the sensorial sensation that is left behind by these now absent interventions. 

Eerily absent of human figures, but full of myriad traces of their presence, Yoshiyuki Yatsuda’s ongoing portraits of the suburbs position that which might be on the peripheries of our perception as centre stage. 

Unforgettable (2017-), a series by Yoshiyuki Yatsuda, is to be found on the photographer’s website.