Photographs That Fit in the Hand: Yamamoto Masao 

Born in 1957, Japanese photographer Yamamoto Masao1 1  - Japanese names are given according to common usage in East Asia: surname ­followed by first name.  has been active since the early 1990s and is recognized foremost for his Nakazora series, comprised of nearly 1,500 small prints, some no larger than a postage stamp. Once developed, these images are physically altered and artificially aged, before being assembled into large-scale installations affixed directly to the wall. The photographer’s decision to hang the work this way runs counter to the increasingly debated classic presentation of photography popularized by New York’s Museum of Modern Art which favours framed prints aligned one next to the other at eye-level. Without the frames, ­viewers find themselves face to face with shots whose proximity is ­heightened by the use of small — not to say miniscule — formats, creating a new relationship to the images. 

The prints’ reduced size brings them closer to family snapshots or old photographic forms than to contemporary art photos. This ­impression is reinforced by the deliberately worn feeling of the pictures and by their iconography, the subjects of which are often hard to identify. We will see how the artist, despite recourse to miniaturization and simple forms, ­manages to make the images resonate in the mind, and incites the viewer to internalize or appropriate them to him or herself.