Short Visual Stories

Yamamoto Masao’s series ‘Shizuka (Cleanse)’ –  “Living in the forest, I feel the presence of many “treasures” breathing quietly in nature. I call this presence “Shizuka.”

“Shizuka” means cleansed, pure, clear, and untainted.

I walk around the forest and harvest my “Shizuka” treasures from soil. I try to catch the faint light radiated by these treasures with both my eyes and my camera… I have an impression that something very vague and large might exist beyond the small things I can feel. This is why I started collecting “Shizuka” treasures.

“Shizuka” transmits itself through the delicate movement of air, the smell of the earth, the faint noises of the environment, and rays of light. “Shizuka” sends messages to all five of my senses.

Capturing light is the essence of photography. I am convinced more than ever that photography was created when humans wished to capture light.

I hope you will enjoy “Shizuka”, the treasures of the forest, through my photographs.”

Thomas Hauser’s series ‘Amazona, India’ – still lifes of flowers as a symbol of a timeless Memento Mori, arranged in containers of the industrial age like beer, coke bottles and plastic cups, giving a new meaning of the concept of transience as part of the contemporary reality. All elements constituting the image are engaged in a specific kind of dialogue about the moment of mortality: while the topic of natural circle of flowering and decay is on the subject, on the other hand, the material goods that define it would be quite possible that will outlast for centuries.

Daniel Mariotti’s series ‘Hello, Sunshine’ – 31 photographs taken over 31 days of journaling capture the fluctuation of how I experience depression. Even on my best days, where the world appears most vivid and colorful, depression is ever present … . It’s important to note that depression is not sadness. Sadness is a fleeting emotion tied to circumstance. Depression makes me view things indirectly; much like the photographs from this series, my focal point is a white cloud and the details are in the peripherals making it harder to see the landscape. Other days it almost blends in seamlessly… The way we perceive our world is affected by masses, both physical and emotional, that operate like gravity, pulling our attention to it, forever altering the way we interact with the world around us. Hello, Sunshine draws from Einstein’s theory of relativity, exploring the gravity of depression.”

The series is accompanied by poems and is published in a photo book.

Daido Moriyama‘s photobook ‘ Ango‘ – a visual tale of jet-black photographs inspired by Ango Sakaguchi’s famous short-story “In the Forest, Beneath Cherries in Full Bloom” about an old version of the symbolic meaning of cherry blossoms as demonic beauty of the fears.

“Nowadays, when the cherries bloom, people think it’s time for a party. They go under the trees and eat and drink and mouth the old sayings about spring and pretty blossoms, but it’s all one big lie. I mean, it wasn’t until Edo, maybe a couple of hundred years ago, that people started crowding under cherry blossoms to drink and puke and fight. In the old days – the really old days – nobody gave a damn about the view. They were scared to go under the blossoms. People today think they can have a wild time under the trees, but take the people out of the picture and it’s just plain scary… Without people, a forest of cherries in full bloom is not pretty, just something to be afraid of.”

Through a strange romance between a beautiful but monstrous woman and a bandit, who scared of nothing except the feeling when going under cherry blossoms in bloom, at the end when he dispelled his fears and felt a relief, he found that the secret of the cherry forest might be the frightening loneliness and infinite emptiness.

“Even now, no one knows the secret of the cherry forest in full bloom. Perhaps it was loneliness. For the man no longer had to fear loneliness. He was loneliness itself. Now, for the first time, he looked all around. Above him where the blossoms. Beneath them was the silent, infinite emptiness, the stillness of the rain of blossoms. That was all. Beyond that, there was no secret.”

Source – book presentation and can be viewed here

Ron Jude’s series ‘12 Hz’ –  large-scale black and white images of primordial landscapes focusing on the raw materials of the planet as a visual chronicle of the constant changes in our physical world where the natural phenomena operate independently of anthropocentric experience.

“The title of this work references the limits of human perception—12 Hz is the lowest sound threshold of human hearing. It suggests imperceptible forces, from plate tectonics to the ocean tides, from cycles of growth and decay in the forest, to the incomprehensibility of geological spans of time. The photographs in 12 Hz allude to the ungraspable scale and veiled mechanics of these phenomena, while acknowledging a desire to gain a broader perspective, beyond the human enterprise, in a time of ecological and political crisis.”

You could listen to a sample clip of the 12 Hz audio component by Joshua Bonnetta (best with headphones).