Masao Yamamoto: Small Things in Silence

A new edition of Yamamoto’s much-loved photographic homage to the precarious, the delicate and the humble, with new images and a redesigned cover

Japanese photographer Masao Yamamoto trained as an oil painter before discovering that photography was the ideal medium for the theme that most interested him—the ability of the image to evoke memories.

Small Things in Silence surveys the 20-year career of one of Japan's most important photographers. Yamamoto's portraits, landscapes and still lifes are made into small, delicate prints, which the photographer frequently overpaints, dyes or steeps in tea. Edited and sequenced by Yamamoto himself, this volume includes images from each of the photographer's major projects—Box of Ku, Nakazora, Kawa and Shizuka—as well as installation shots of some of Yamamoto's original photographic installations, and, in this new edition, seven new images and a new cover. In the words of Yamamoto himself: "I try to capture moments that no one sees and make a photo from them. When I see them in print, a new story begins."

Masao Yamamoto (born 1957) lives and works in Japan. He has published numerous books, including a previous edition of Small Things in Silence (RM/Seigensha, 2015) and Tori (Radius Books, 2016). His work is held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the International Center of Photography, New York, and others.