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Materia

by Yoshihiko Ueda

Photographs: Yoshihiko Ueda

Text: Christopher Phillips

Publisher: Kyuryudo

72 pages

Year: 2012

ISBN: 9784763012043

Comments: 397x301mm, softcover, design: Hideki Nakajima

The Life of the Forest  by Christopher Phillips
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The photographs in this book were made by Yoshihiko Ueda on Yakushima, a small, circular, mountain-covered island lying to the southwest of Japan between Kyushu and Okinawa. Formed roughly 13 million years ago, Yakushima is recognized today as the site of one of our planet’s most heterogeneous mixtures of climatic zones, ranging from subtropical to subarctic. Yakushima’s abundant rainfall, as well as the rivers and waterfalls encountered at lower elevations, support an extraordinary variety of life-forms. Perhaps the most astonishing of these are found in the ancient woodlands that occupy the upper altitudes of the island’s mountains. These primeval forests are home to some of the oldest trees on earth, cypresses and Yakusugi (Japanese cedars) more than one thousand years old.

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When Ueda reached Yakushima in the spring of 2011 and set out with his 8 x 10-inch view camera, he knew that he wanted to concentrate on the power of nature—and specifically on the enduring life-force of the island’s ancient trees. He arrived with his earlier photographs of the Quinault forest clearly in mind. But as soon as he set up his camera in Yakushima's high-altitude forest and began to look at the images formed on the ground glass of his camera, he realized that he would have to find a completely new photographic approach. It occurred to him that much had changed in the years since he had photographed Quinault. At that time, he was in his 30s, and not yet a father; now he is in his 50s, with four children in his family. Then he was a relentless photographic perfectionist, determined to work out every visual element in advance; now he had come to appreciate the charm of photographic spontaneity, and to savor the unexpected sights that sometimes flickeringly presented themselves to his camera.

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Christopher Phillips is the curator at the International Center of Photography in New York.

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