THE CLUB is pleased to present "Wet-Land," a solo exhibition by Yojiro Imasaka.
Contemporary artist, Yojiro Imasaka moved to the United States in 2007 and has been based in New York since then. Imasaka dives into the nature of each region, observes the changes in climate and landscape, and spends many days to capture the one and only shot. Colors created in the darkroom makes the work a unique piece, which transcends the realm of photography and draws the viewer into the landscape. Works have been exhibited internationally including at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, among others, and are in museum collections such as the San Jose Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. This exhibition is his first solo exhibition in Japan, which features Imasaka’s one of the most recent works photographed by using the Wet Collodion Glass Process*1 used in the 19th century. The work in this series have been acquired by the New Orleans Museum of Art.
“As an artist I’m always interested in making images that remind people of not just the past, or present, but also the future. In the Spring of 2021, I spent nearly six weeks photographing in the Louisiana Bayou*2 in the southern part of the United States. Its distinctive natural environment reminds me of an undeveloped forest. A quiet, breathtaking scene reflected on an extremely slow-- moving stream has a way of deadening the sense of time.
Unlike the pictures that digital devices show us today, this mid--1800s photographic method often creates blur and un-sharp images. There will be streaks of chemicals; sometimes images are partially peeled off, and even show a vignette all around the image. As I wandered further and deeper and continued photographing, I was caught by that the idea that images I’m making utilizing this process are similar to visions what we have in our minds as memories, because; there were always huge gaps between what I remember and what my smartphone shows. My memory is often a blur, partially focused and even fading out as time goes by. Using a very thin glass as film also emphasizes its own vulnerability. Today, digital devices store tremendous amounts of information, but I believe that what really matters in the end is what we remember in our own mind.
I often photograph in areas that people can easily access. So, I can see people passing by in the glass view finder of my large format camera. But, with the long exposure time of the Collodion Process, they never appear in the image.
This juxtaposition between everlasting nature and our ephemeral existence reminds me of a future vision; of a post--human landscape. It has been here long before us, and will be here long after us.” - Yojiro Imasaka
*1 Wet--‐Collodion (Glass) Process
The collodion process is an early photographic process. The collodion process, mostly synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Collodion is normally used in its wet form, but can also be used in dry form, at the cost of greatly increased exposure time. The latter made the dry form unsuitable for the usual portraiture work of most professional photographers of the 19th century. The use of the dry form was therefore mostly confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes--‐long exposure times were tolerable.
*2 Bayou
A bayou (/ˈbaɪ.oʊ/ or /ˈbaɪjuː/) is a Franco--‐English term used in the United States for a body of water typically found in a flat, low--‐lying area, and can refer either to an extremely slow--‐moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), or to a marshy lake or wetland. The name "bayou" can also refer to a creek whose current reverses daily due to tides and which contains brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton. Bayous are commonly found in the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States, notably the Mississippi River Delta, with the states of Louisiana and Texas being famous for them.
Yojiro Imasaka (1983 -)
Born in Hiroshima, Japan and relocated to the United Sates in 2007. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA in photography from Nihon University College of Art Photography Department in Tokyo, Japan in 2007, and an MFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2010. Imasaka’s photographs have been seen in solo and group exhibitions, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, New Jersey City University Gallery, Art Project International in New York, a solo presentation at Paris Photo in France 2018 presented by Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery in New York, among others. His works have been purchased by such notable collections as San Jose Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Mead Art Museum/Amherst College, Carnegie Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, and multiple private collections. His publication includes “U.S.A -Untitled Scapes of America- (2014) which received a prize and exhibited at Phoenix Art Museum, and “Trade Winds” (2018). Yojiro’s works have been profiled by multiple publications, including the Wall Street Journal, China Post, Relief magazine, ART OUT MUSEE, Whitewall Magazine and VOGUE Online.
