photography – Nobuo YAMANAKA

Nobuo Yamanaka "Tokyo in Pinhole"

Nobuo Yamanaka debuted in 1971 with 'Projecting the image of the rivers onto the river'. His photography has been exhibited at the 11th International Printing Biennale (Tokyo), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo) and the 15th Sao Paulo Biennale (Brazil).

Nobuo Yamanaka died in New York in 1982.

The photographs exhibited at IPP #0 Landscape are in the care of a private gallery and very rarely on display.

A Perspective on Nobuo Yamanaka

                                                         by Keita Hayashi (visual artist)

Nobuo Yamanaka "Tkyo in Pinhole"

When I first started thinking seriously about this Inverse Perspective Project exhibition, one artist's name immediately sprang to mind: Nobuo Yamanaka. Mr Yamanaka was a pioneer intrigued by photography not only as a photographer, but as a visual artist. He created works of art by applying the principle of the pinhole camera, and thus questions the validity of the established framework of art and media. Nowadays it is not a rare thing at all to find a photographic work at an art exhibition, and quite a few artists actually use pinhole cameras to create their works. But it is all the more because of this that Yamanaka's work still sticks in my mind.

Nobuo Yamanaka's maiden work, 'Projecting the image of the rivers onto the river' is well-known. The simple act of projecting the image of something onto that very something is in fact a relentless inquisition into what the image of a thing is at all. Yamanaka's pinhole photography is no different: the landscape captured though the pinhole camera has no focus or meaning, but there the world appears overturned not only from top to bottom, but also from left to right, from fore to rear, and from front to back. Without doubt, this could be called the 'inverse perspective of landscape'.

Nobuo Yamanaka: abridged resumé

– Debuted in 1971 with ‘Projecting the images of the rivers onto the river’

– Exhibited at (among others): 

• Nirenoki Gallery, Tokyo (Nobuo YAMANAKA – 9 pin holes –)
• The 11th International Printing Biennale, Tokyo
• The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
• The 15th Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil
• ‘Photograph in contemporary art’

– Died in New York in 1982