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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

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  ©Yuji Hamada

• ©Yuji Hamada

• ©Yuji Hamada

R G B (2018)

“I can still recall watching resplendent white light reflect off the local pool as a child. Back then I didn’t understand that the white was actually a blend of reds, greens and blues. Even as an adult I’m amazed at the makeup of light and shadow. Our brains filter out all kinds of information when we look at things. Light and shadow are usually only processed on a subconscious level. I wanted to see how various kinds of film render seemingly universal elements that we all take for granted. To accomplish this I limited myself to working only with natural light and printing under set conditions. The results are abstractions, and I think that their beauty lies in that lack of substance.”

Yuji Hamada

R G B is the follow-up to C/M/Y, Yuji Hamada’s first celebration of color and light. This time he’s chosen to focus on the three colors that make up light itself. In order to bring out the natural grain and colors of various film stocks, Hamada took multiple exposures of shadows projected through Red, Green and Blue filters onto a white background.

The project is also a meditation on the role of photography as a means of documentation. Hamada stocked up on every color film currently on the market and strove to bring out the full potential of each stock’s inherit color and grain structures, adhering to special conditions while shooting and in the darkroom. The names of the film stocks used in each image appear in their titles, not unlike a scientific study of modern films. The work exists as both Hamada’s art and as a historical document of sorts.

Unlike much of photography, where the subject matter is the theme, Hamada’s atypical process invites the viewer to abandon their preconceptions of form and experience color at face value. Using multiple exposures to layer shadows he’s created abstract, airy images without any apparent motif, allowing the viewer to appreciate the “beauty of the unseen.”

Yuji Hamada

Born in Osaka in 1979. He began working at a publisher upon graduation from Nihon University College of Art’s Department of Photography in 2003. He has worked as a freelance photographer since 2006. Hamada’s work questions the nature of ‘the seen’ and ‘the unseen.’

Major exhibitions of his photographs include ‘Pulsar+Primal Mountain’ (2013) and ‘C/M/Y’ (2015) at PGI in Tokyo as well as ‘photograph’ and ‘Primal Mountain’ at Munich’s GALLERIE f 5.6 (2016).

His work has also been shown at  the “Images” photo festival in Vevey, Switzerland (2014), the Aix-en-Provence Photo Festival in France and New York’s Conde Nast Gallery (2015), along with many other venues.

His debut monograph ‘photograph’ was nominated for the Paris Photo/Aperture First Photobook Award 2014.

He is currently based in Tokyo but continues to show his work across the globe.

In 2015 he published his experimental printing project ‘C/M/Y’ and ‘BRANCH,’ a collection created in Switzerland.

PGI Exhibitions