Yusuke Yamatani
Tsugi no yoru e (Onto the next night)
In his series Tsugi no yoru e (Onto the next night), 2010, Yamatani gives viewers access to the wild world of young rockers and skaters. He prints their idiosyncratic life in ferrotyped gelatin silver prints. Using this forgotten printing process to depict his generation, he manages successfully to reevaluate a classic approach with a fresh understanding of it. The six black-and-white works in the Kadist collection come from this Osaka project and present a kind of portrait of youth who meet up over skateboarding and congregate around punk rock concerts. Out of their ennui comes a creative freedom expressed through lifestyle.
Yusuke Yamatani grew up playing music with several different punk bands. He continued his music while studying philosophy at Rissho University in Tokyo. At twenty-two, Yamatani decided he wanted to be able to accomplish something on his own, rather than be identified as part of a music group. He turned to photography, initially using a girlfriend’s camera. He moved to Nagasaki, where he studied with Shomei Tomatsu, who became a major influence as he embarked on a career on his own as a photographer. After several years he returned to Tokyo, but soon moved away from the capital to Osaka, where he believed he would be able to capture something local. Recently he explained, "I like my photographs to be filled with humanism rather than something sophisticated."