Kelly Mullin - Yuji Hamada

Yuji Hamada

Hamada is a 36 year old photographer who started his career taking pictures when he was 18. He was born in Osaka, Japan and currently resides in Tokyo. He graduated from Department of photography, College of Art, Nihon University in 2003. Two years after the graduation he belonged to Japanese fashion publishing company, INFAS Publications as a photographer and studio assistant. Yuji became a freelance photographer in 2006.

Yuji has created a single photo book which is simply called "Photograph". It contains a series of photographs based on rays of light breaking in to different scenes found in a normal day. Light and shadow seem to play a huge role within all of his photographic work. Most of his work portrays every day things that occur but seen from a different point of view and offers us a frozen moment of a beautiful part of each day.

"One day in 2005, I saw a girl in the park. It was almost evening, and she seemed mesmerized by a patch of sunlight resting on her palm. She asked me, “Where did this light come from, and how?” I mulled over the question; the light had been emitted by the sun, before traveling an astronomical distance to reach that very place, but I refrained from telling her so. She seemed to be looking for a different kind of answer."

His book is worth $500 on Amazon. None of these photos are framed in any certain way and there is no captioning to each within the book. The photographs are left to ones imagination to figure out. On each page the picture takes up the entire page which allows you to see detail within each photograph. 

I chose to pick this specific artist as my favorite because I think it connects most to me. His photos contain a specific placement of light and composition. This type of photographic is something I'm drawn too because I try to use light as much as I can within my photographs. Light makes a photographic something look at and makes it beautiful. For me if the light is wrong so is the photograph. Landscape is also something I'm particularly fascinated with so that also drew me in. These aren't beautiful landscapes either. These are landscapes he made beautiful by use of the light.