NYAB Event - Kunio Imamura “Nature and Light”

Kunio Imamura “Nature and Light”

Caelum Gallery

This event has ended.

Nature photography in the American school of Ansel Adams centers on a majestic, awe-inspiring approach to landscape that befits a vast and varied country like America. Imamura photographs the landscapes of the small island country of Japan, and it is understandable that he emphasizes a more intimate approach to landscape. Although he is a color photographer, he treats the medium like black and white photography, making strong tonal contrasts centrally important. Light and dark, in his works, are visual metaphors for opposites in human nature as well as in nature herself.

The artist does not recognize a difference between art that is made by hand, such as painting and sculpture, and photography that is made by way of a mechanical device. He declares that the war is won and photography is an integral part of the sweep of fine art history. An observer cannot help seeing in his works the strong influence of traditional Japanese screen painting. Even though his prints are small in comparison to screens, they give the impression of panoramic scale with simple motifs such as a stand of tress in sunlight or the ocean at ebb tide under moonlight.