Tori

Tori (the Japanese word for "bird") gathers Masao Yamamoto's small-format photographs of birds in flight, at rest, and as skeletal remains, extending the meditation on fragility and impermanence that runs through his work.

Published by Radius Books in 2017, the unpaginated volume presents Yamamoto's images in his characteristic small prints, often toned, cropped close, or deliberately imperfect. They are arranged without captions, so recurring forms, a wing, a feather, a bird against empty sky, accumulate into a single visual meditation rather than a documentary sequence.

Yamamoto (b. 1957) is known internationally for bodies of work such as "Kawa=Flow" and "Nakazora," in which he prints, ages, and sometimes physically alters small photographs before presenting them in loose grids or boxes. His photographs draw on Japanese aesthetic traditions of impermanence and a personal, tactile approach to the photographic object itself.