FEATURING
Kansuke Yamamoto
Kansuke Yamamoto was a photographer and poet. He is widely considered as one of the prominent surrealists of Japan. His father was a photographer who ran a photography store in Naku-ka. From a young age, Kansuke explored the photographic medium as well as poetry eventually being exposed to surrealism while reading a poetry magazine called ‘cine’ which promoted surrealism and dadaism in the region. From this moment, he became deeply engaged in the surrealist movement. Kansuke’s work is largely championed as offering a highly unique access to themes of isolationism prevalent at the time in Japan. What predominantly attracted Kansuke to the surrealist movement was its political stance against acts of war and oppression and its interlinkages with psychoanalysis. This being said, his work is heavily intertwined with the complicated history of war and post-war Japan.