A Box of Ku / Nakazora

Yamamoto’s box and its contents poignantly illustrate the relationship between time and memory. Keeping a box of photographs is a practice that both saves memories for posterity and perhaps reminds us of the unstoppable momentum of time passing. This can result ultimately in the absence or emptiness referenced in the work’s title. The artist began his series of boxed photo works as Box of Ku—ku 空 means “emptiness” in Japanese—and continues it under the title Nakazora 中空, a Buddhist term that can mean the space between sky and earth, or emptiness.

The photographs here, despite their varying sizes and subjects, all strikingly utilize empty, or “negative,” space. Yamamoto delicately distressed, toned, and colored the photographs, giving them an aged appearance that contrasts with the ephemeral atmosphere of the images. His photographs are often likened to Japanese haiku—short poems that use simple, direct imagery inspired by nature.