Kurayami — Light, Darkness, and the Space Between
Kurayami (暗闇, "darkness") is a photobook by Masao Yamamoto and musician Akira Uchida, published as part of the IIKKI limited edition series. It continues the artistic dialogue the two began with Sasanami in 2020, extending that collaboration into new territory.
The book is structured in two chapters — Side A and Side B — each moving through Yamamoto's characteristic register: small-scale, hand-altered prints that hold light and shadow with equal attention. The images circle themes of transience, nature, intimacy, and presence without resolving them. Darkness here is not absence but atmosphere — a condition in which things become perceptible rather than disappear.
Uchida's music is not incidental to the work. It functions as a coequal voice, composed in relation to the images and intended to be heard alongside them. Each copy includes a download code for the music by Akira Uchida, making the sonic dimension of the book directly accessible.
Yamamoto's prints have long resisted the conventions of the exhibition-scale photograph. Their scale is intimate, their surfaces often worked by hand — tea-stained, scratched, layered. Kurayami carries that sensibility into book form, where sequence and proximity shape meaning as much as individual images do.
Available in the shop's Photobooks catalogue alongside related titles in photography and artist publications.
About the Artists
Masao Yamamoto (b. 1957) is a Japanese photographer known for his intimate, small-scale prints, often hand-altered and poetic in character. His work explores memory, nature, and presence, and has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, including Yancey Richardson in New York, Galerie RX in Paris, and HackelBury Fine Art in London.
Akira Uchida is a Japanese composer and musician whose practice spans ambient and improvisational sound. He frequently collaborates with visual artists and is a recurring presence in IIKKI's cross-disciplinary catalogue.
