The seeming-landscape photography of Yamamoto Masao’s new body of work at Jackson Fine Art presents an obvious parallel. Landscape photography proceeds from reality to a miniature view of it, limited and composed by the photographer’s eye and created through a well-defined process to be seen. Yamamoto’s Bonsai — Microcosms Macrocosms, on view through June 29, is a set of monochrome portraits of the cultivated trees, which are themselves real trees made small and thus framed by the bonsai master’s eyes and hands and meant to provide a source of contemplation for viewers.
Thus, both art forms cycle nature back to the viewer through artistic processes, and the viewing itself provokes a recycling as the viewer’s mind returns to the object’s source material.
