Yojiro Imasaka uses the historical wet collodion photographic process to produce photos of landscapes from glass negatives, creating images that are soft, dream-like, and filled with light. He employs a classic 8 x 10 camera in densely vegetated woodlands, spending hours observing subtle changes in the primeval scenery.

Yojiro Imasaka is a Japanese artist based in New York who utilizes the historic wet collodion photographic process to capture landscapes from glass negatives, producing images that are soft, ethereal, and imbued with light. Using a classic 8x10 camera, Imasaka ventures into densely vegetated woodlands, where he dedicates hours to observing the nuanced changes in the environment. After spending days carefully monitoring shifts in the landscape, he captures highly detailed images of a universal, yet personal, landscape on large-format negatives. Imasaka’s process is an intimate dialogue with nature, creating photographs that evoke a sense of time and place.

In the darkroom, Imasaka’s craft extends further as he applies delicate toning and other adjustments to imbue his images with custom hues, creating a distinctive, timeless quality. His work echoes the tradition of Impressionist painters, reinterpreting the natural world through a lens of contemplation and sensitivity. By extracting a final, glowing moment from the increasingly eroded state of the landscape, Imasaka emphasizes the fleeting beauty of nature and its complex relationship with human existence.

Imasaka holds a BFA in Photography from Nihon University College of Art in Tokyo, and an MFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. His artistic journey has been shaped by a deep understanding of both the technical and philosophical aspects of photography and this dual approach informs the unique visual language he has developed.

Recent solo exhibitions of Imasaka’s work include Wet Land at Ginza ATRIUM, Tokyo (2023); Returning Bayou at 16 Rue du Faubourg, Paris (2022); Wet-Land at THE CLUB, Tokyo (2022); and Correspondence at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, New York (2020). His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and Art Projects International in New York, among others. His works are held in the public collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Mead Art Museum, as well as in numerous private collections.

Featured Works

Tsunagu

Yojiro Imasaka

Horizon Dreams of Color

Correspondence

British Vogue

Paris Photo: The Force Of Nature

Wet Land, 2024

The book features Imasaka’s recent series of 76 landscape photographs of the "bayou" or swampy area at the mouth of the Mississippi River, taken in Louisiana bayou. Imasaka's photographic technique of choice for this shoot was the "collodion wet plate method," a classic technique used at the end of the 19th century, before the invention of film.

A large 8 x 10 camera is set with a glass plate about 1 mm thick in place of film, and the image is burned onto the glass through long exposures. The result is a unique landscape that transcends both time and space.

Language: Japanese, English
Details: 168 pages
Size: 24.9 x 30 x 2.6 cm

USA, 2014

Atlas, 2018

Details: 32 pages
Size: 15.2 x 21.5 cm