Yonehara Yasumasa (b. 1959)
Tokyo Amour N32-4
Japan, 2008
Sculpture; instant film photographs and polymethyl methacrylate box
Copyright: Yonehara Yasumasa
Loan from the artist
(L2014-50.03)

’Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.’

– Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004), untitled essay (1952)

In his photographic works such as the Tokyo Amour series, Yonehara clearly rebels against Cartier-Bresson’s goal of capturing a ‘decisive moment.’ Using a technique much more closely aligned with the spontaneous methods of Beat poets and Abstract Expressionist painters, Yonehara refrains from editing his work and inundates his viewers with random glimpses of an event.