Daisuke Yokota

Born: 1983- //  Yokota is part of a 
generation of young artists using photography in subversive 
new ways. His approach combines multiple rephotographing 
and printing, applying acid or flame to the end results, and 
making one-off prints and books from unexpected materials 
in staged public performances. Yokota is working out of, and 
pushing forward, a Japanese tradition of photobook-making 
that harks back to the visceral experimentation of the Provoke 
generation 

I don’t make work to express my feelings, it’s more like burning them

the Zine form: “A self published limited edition zine, the publication marks one of Yokota’s earliest printed works. Experimental and distinct to his book-making process, SITE is a series of images which displays the artist’s photographic approach in exploring both memory and time. With SITE, Yokota chose to experiment with both photoshop and digital forms of image distortion.” https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/site

“His practice consists in constantly revisiting his own archive of personal photographs by adding layers of accidents, in order to metaphorically signify the superimposition of states of consciousness and memories. Of- ten referring to the principles of echo and reverb, Yokota also establishes links between visual and musical fields. One could say that he captures ‘noise’ in the broadest sens of the word.

Daisuke Yokota is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed artist’s books, either handmade and self-published or realized with various publishers.” https://jeankentagauthier.com/en/artistes/presentation/5/daisuke-yokota

DAISUKE YOKOTA — For Color Photographs, I worked with layered sheets of unused, large-format color film, experimenting with the development before scanning them. Generally, photography exists to record reality. The present development of technology ignores the material. Originally, needless to say, film negatives generated the image, and there was paper to stabilize it. In short, photography is a combination of images without the mass and the matter [film and paper]. For
Color Photographs, I focused on this material side. https://purple.fr/magazine/ss-2016-issue-25/daisuke-yokota/

note the foils included… how they overlay.

finally, flashback, only because it makes those of the hobby board wonder…

very clear explanation that leaves those expecting their method to be the only method, mis-interpreting the steps

the first group of amateur, the most common type, understand only what they know how to do.

American West

when trivia becomes the reason for the gathering. Weekenders, devoted members of the Snobby Hobby discuss work turning to the meaningless, quickly.

It may not mean anything, yet it fills the time of those without much effort.

Let’s get to the work… they can’t. What they can say about their work is how it was done. Even after decades, the conversation is at how-to.

speaking from rumor. once heard becomes the word.

The why-for of considering their campfire stories. Do they propose a mode of looking without understanding who, what it excludes. What, the how and the who they condone (or condemn) matters, perhaps, even more as the world of profession recedes into the past. There are amateurs and then again others. The nature of a field mixed without common ground is my interest.

Richard Avedon

Baldwin and Avedon. Nothing Personal [ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/richard-avedon-and-james-baldwins-joint-examination-of-american-identity ] was my preferred book. Baldwin’s writing was my prompt. Many years later, I see Avedon as a masterful photographer. A maker of cliches rather than a perpetuator of them. His story is that of many commercial photographers, although he was able to move from the commerce to collection with help from the Amon Carter.

 Philip Gefter’s book, “What Becomes a Legend Most,” argues for Avedon’s place as one of the 20th century’s most consequential photographers.

Laura Wilson documented the project’s gestation and birth in her book “Avedon at Work: In the American West.” Published in 2003. She learned the most necessary “craft” of photography — dealing with the world. The following video at the Amon Carter hits several key points in her method.


Modernage

Founded by Ralph Baum in the 1950′s, New York’s Modernage Photographics pioneered many of the most advanced darkroom techniques in the last half of the 20th Century. A master photographer and technician, Baum was to champion the notion that the art of the photographic print was equally important to the creation of the photographic negative that served as its inspiration. Name Drop: Josef Cernovics; Michael J. Masucci 


1985 Amon Carter shows Avedon In the American West

Deborah Bright (spe exposure) publishes Mother Nature and Marlboro Men… about landscape photography and western spaces

Click to access Bright-Marlboro_LAndscape.pdf