Yamamoto Masao: Bonsai – Microcosms Macrocosms
Yamamoto Masao: Bonsai – Microcosms Macrocosms
Published by T & M Projects
By Timothy LeBlanc
Bonsai is an art of years. Photography that of seconds;
A tree is in a constant state of change. A photo stays frozen forever;
Masao Yamamoto, #4009 from Bonsai, 2018
While all of this is true, Yamamoto Masao has been able to encapsulate how these juxtaposed truths can come together in harmony. In his hands, and in the hands of the master bonsai artist Akiyama Minoru who designed the garden and trees featured, they come together to perfection in Bonsai – Microcosms Macrocosms. Masao’s photos are not only beautiful but offer peace to the viewer, a respite from the forever busy world if even only for a second.
Masao Yamamoto, #4001 from Bonsai, 2018
This spirit of harmony among opposites is highlighted so well in the essay written by Minoru: “Bonsai is a spiritual landscape which actually represents nature in a single container… It is a miracle that a small universe can be found in [there].” Minoru has long been respected in his field, winning the highest awards available for bonsai professionals. The devotion to his art has been a combination of the old form with new techniques, yet another juxtaposition smoothly explored in these 66, 9 ½” x 8 ¼”, pages.
Masao presents the opposite approach by applying old techniques to the relatively young art of photography. Masao has focused on producing photos that could have been made yesterday, or fifty years ago, or sometimes even one-hundred fifty years ago. He prints his works only big enough to fit in one hand, toned to look ageless. The photos in Bonsai further this pairing of new and old.
Masao Yamamoto, #4000 from Bonsai, 2018
Anyone who studied western photography would notice the through line of tree portraiture: from the very start of the medium with William Henry Fox Talbot’s An Oak Tree in Winter (1842-43) to Ansel Adams’ Oak Tree, Sunset City, Sierra Foothills, California, (1962) and right on to these images presented by Masao. At times in the past, formal tree portraits might be about the grandeur of God and nature. The main differentiator here lies not in the ever-changing organic material but with the fact that all of Masao’s trees presented in Bonsai are contained in a pot, a highly important aspect to anyone in the world of bonsai. This quite literally makes the Microcosms to play off the Macrocosms of which Minoru spoke, one would imagine this giving us the title of the book. The pots also act in a formal way as a pedestal to elevate what might be just a tree into a piece of art.
It is hard to say much more about the photos presented here, not because they are not great but because they are so strikingly silent themselves. It is a silence of peace, of calm, of reflection. Spending any extended amount of time looking through Bonsai – Microcosms Macrocosms, and I highly recommend that everyone does, is an exercise in listening to that silence and living in the serene.