Risaku Suzuki x2

Kumano, Yuki, Sakura. Photographs by Risaku Suzuki. Text by Kiyokazu Washida. Tankosha, Kyoto, 2007. 136 pp., 80 color and 8 black & illustrations., 7¾x9½".

Yuki Sakura. Photographs by Risaku Suzuki. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2007. 40 pp., 31 four-color plates., 17x14".

Kumano, Yuki, Sakura (top) is a catalogue from a Risaku Suzuki exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2007 - were the photographs have been placed in seasonal order (showing the artist’s approach, which "swings like a poetic pendulum between the moment and eternity" as it's so beautifully put).


In the book Yuki Sakura the photgrapher Risaku Suzuki "presents two quintessential Japanese subjects - snowfall and cherry blossoms - in a manner that is at once timeless and refreshingly new."

"[The book] Yuki Sakura opens with photographs of snowflakes drifting weightlessly in a deep blue Hokkaido night sky. These are followed by high-key landscapes of freshly-fallen snow bathed in morning light, punctuated by the merest suggestions of trees rising above the white drifts. The book ends in a crescendo of cherry blossoms against a backdrop of the branches from which they burst forth; the use of extreme selective focus in these last photographs softens the flowers into light pink cloud-forms, creating a full circle."


Magical and beautiful. I wish I owned this book (and the catalogue)!


"Risaku Suzuki is one of Japan's most prominent young photgraphers. His photographs were included in 'The History of Japanese Photography' exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and are housed in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; International Center of Photography, New York; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography."


Here ("Setting Foot in Risaku Suzuki’s Nature Photography") is a good place to read and see some more of this photographer for example.