{"title":"Tsutomu Yamagata","description":"\u003ch2\u003eTsutomu Yamagata — Photography from Tokyo\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTsutomu Yamagata is a Tokyo-based photographer, born in 1966, whose work moves across surveillance, urban observation, and social documentation. Trained in law at Keio University, he has developed a photographic practice concerned with watching and being watched — the structures of visibility that organise contemporary life. His books are published primarily through \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/zen-foto-gallery\" title=\"Browse all Zen Foto Gallery publications at Lokator100\"\u003eZen Foto Gallery\u003c\/a\u003e, the Tokyo publisher that has been central to his output since 2012.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eAbout the Work\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYamagata's practice is methodical and sustained. Across multiple bodies of work — from \u003cem\u003eThirteen Orphans\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eTen Disciples\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eMy Little Cosmos\u003c\/em\u003e — he returns to questions of framing, distance, and the social weight of the photographic act. His 2019 book \u003ca href=\"\/products\/surveillance-tsutomu-yamagata\" title=\"View Surveillance by Tsutomu Yamagata — available now at Lokator100\"\u003eSurveillance - Tsutomu Yamagata\u003c\/a\u003e, published jointly by Zen Foto Gallery and Case Publishing, is among his most direct engagements with those themes. His work has been exhibited internationally and held in permanent collections including the UNM Art Museum in New Mexico.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eWhy Lokator100 Carries This Work\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLokator100 selects titles on the basis of sustained attention, not market cycles. Yamagata's photobooks reward that kind of reading — they are not books that exhaust themselves on first encounter. They belong in a working library of contemporary Japanese photography.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eCollecting Notes\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll publications in this collection are produced by \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/zen-foto-gallery\" title=\"Browse all Zen Foto Gallery publications at Lokator100\"\u003eZen Foto Gallery\u003c\/a\u003e, a Tokyo-based publisher with a consistent record in Japanese photobook production. Edition specifics and condition are documented individually per listing. For a broader view of available titles, the \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"Explore our curated selection of photobooks at Lokator100\"\u003ePhotobooks\u003c\/a\u003e collection provides additional context across the shop's photography holdings.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"surveillance-tsutomu-yamagata","title":"Surveillance – Tsutomu Yamagata","description":"\u003ch2\u003eObservation Without Encounter: \u003cem\u003eSurveillance\u003c\/em\u003e by Tsutomu Yamagata\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"\/collections\/tsutomu-yamagata\" title=\"Browse all Tsutomu Yamagata titles at Lokator100\"\u003eTsutomu Yamagata\u003c\/a\u003e has built a practice around people at the edges of ordinary social visibility. Earlier books — \u003cem\u003eThirteen Orphans\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eTen Disciples\u003c\/em\u003e — established this attention to figures who sit outside the centre of documentary convention. \u003cem\u003eSurveillance\u003c\/em\u003e continues that inquiry while shifting its method substantially: here the subject is young women in their twenties, and the photographic encounter has been replaced by a system designed to remove the photographer from the room entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYamagata recruited participants through online bulletin boards and personal connections. They came from different circumstances — office workers, teachers, art students — and each was briefed on the project before agreeing to take part. He then handed each participant an infrared trail camera of the kind used to monitor wildlife. The camera triggered automatically on movement, produced no audible sound, emitted no visible light, and offered no means of reviewing captured images. The photographer was absent. The apparatus was not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat this arrangement produces is an image-space that resists easy categorisation. The women knew they might be photographed. At moments they appear to address the camera directly, composing themselves for an unseen lens. At other moments they move through their rooms without apparent awareness of it. The resulting photographs sit between performance and inattention, between self-presentation and its suspension — an unstable register that the book neither resolves nor dramatises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe conceptual argument of \u003cem\u003eSurveillance\u003c\/em\u003e concerns the asymmetry of the gaze: who looks, under what conditions, and what that looking produces in the person who is seen. The book does not present intimacy as access. It frames the camera as a mediating instrument that structures the relationship between observer and observed before any image is made. Published by \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/zen-foto-gallery\" title=\"Explore all Zen Foto Gallery publications at Lokator100\"\u003eZen Foto Gallery\u003c\/a\u003e, the work sits within a publishing programme attentive to photography that tests the terms of its own practice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs an object, \u003cem\u003eSurveillance\u003c\/em\u003e is a softcover \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/photography-photobooks\" title=\"Browse the photobook catalogue at Lokator100\"\u003ePhotobooks\u003c\/a\u003e edition housed in a slipcase, printed bilingually in English and Japanese, and issued in a limited edition of 500 copies. It contains 131 images across 144 pages.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Zen Foto Gallery","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53904838820186,"sku":"978-4-905453-72-7","price":80.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0946\/3359\/1130\/files\/surveillance-tsutomu-yamagata-front-cover.jpg?v=1774897745"}],"url":"https:\/\/lokator100.store\/collections\/tsutomu-yamagata.oembed","provider":"Lokator100","version":"1.0","type":"link"}