Yusuke Yamatani: Illuminating the Darkness

‘I’ve used the flash a lot since the beginning’, Yasuke Yamatani says. His acclaimed first album, Tsugi no Yoru e, featured punks and skaters, establishing him as a photographer with a highly contrasted, edgy black and white style. His style raises questions about how he views his flash as it rips through the dead of night. Into the Light, his latest series, takes an experimental approach that—pardon the pun—could shed light on his process.

The project carries his signature black and white snap style. It is themed ‘home’, and he uses an infrared camera to bring to life images that the human eye normally doesn’t see, giving rise to distinctive colors like the pink and green that appear in the pictures.

When asked how he pursued a conceptual path to compose his work, he explains, ‘I have a family of my own, so I take an interest in other families. I want to peek into a broader concept of ‘home’. We live in a time when the internet allows us to catch glimpses of other people’s lives. I want to express that’.

Kohei Yoshiyuki employed similar methods for his work Document Park. From the cover of a voyeur room, he photographed couples locked in embraces outdoors in the park with an infrared camera. It’s a method that makes it possible to see into the mystery of the darkness and safely mingle with the prospect of danger.

‘A tension arises from the possibility of being seen by your subjects’, Yamatani says as he reflects on the moments a flash would go off in the dark hours of the night. At these moments he was keenly aware of the act of clandestine photography.

This series, combining the brightness of the flash and infrared images, exposes the relationship between seeing and being seen—an excessive display of people’s personal lives compared to the past.

‘Light is to illuminate. I want to illuminate what normally hides in the darkness’.