Personal Background
Yutha Yamanaka was born in Tokyo, Japan. He currently lives in Denpasar, Bali. Yamanaka is a Visual Design Communication student, and part time photographer. He is currently working on a challenge of taking one photograph a day for 365 days to upload to his Flickr. There is very little personal information about Yamanaka on the Internet. I was unable to find even a birthday. There is no wikipedia page on him, and every article about him only states his birth city, current home city, and discusses his photography. Like many artists, he is secretive regarding his personal life. I think it’s because they would rather their art speak for them.
Style
Yamanaka’s style combines the raw beauty of nature with the oddity of the unknown and unnatural. He uses natural scenery and editing techniques to portray himself in new and intriguing ways, capturing the viewer’s curiosity. His images are dark and surreal. They encourage the viewer to question their perception, and appreciate the darker aspects of human nature and the natural world. It is reminiscent of art and literature of the dark romanticism genre.
Philosophy
Yamanaka’s work seems to explore the darker aspects of himself. Through his many self portraits, he seems to challenge the viewer’s perception of others and make them look beyond appearances. A person’s appearance may not tell their whole story, because it can’t portray the depth of their emotions. Only art can do that. Yamanaka captures this by showing snapshots of vivid metaphor and feeling in his photography.
Influences
Yamanaka’s work challenged me to think about how to create surreal photography through the subject instead of focusing on editing. Posing with what you have, when done right, can create surrealism through creating images you wouldn’t normally see— scenes that are just a little “off.” He also inspired me to work harder when arranging subjects, and go out of my way to pose in ways I normally wouldn’t. The best self portraits say something about the photographer, and capture them in a light you wouldn’t normally see them in. Taking pictures of moments in everyday life can be nice, but creating situations that normally wouldn’t happen for your photography is especially intriguing.
This was one of the hardest pictures to take, and I ended up not getting the same sort of proportions or sizing as his photo has. Mine is also not as sharp, as I had to take the picture quickly before the flame went out. Most obvious is the fact that the subject is different, although both are self-portraits.
My take on this photo, “Don’t Look At Me,” is vastly different in color, because I have such different personal taste from Yamanaka. However, in both, the background colors are similar to the colors in the crystallized subject. The framing and posing is the same, although mine is much more visually busy because of my colorful jacket and the background I chose.
Again, the framing and posing of both are similar, although I couldn’t exactly replicate the shape of the tree branches. In mine, the contrast between the subject’s legs and the background is a lot higher, because it had snowed on the day I took the picture. It’s obvious that the two pictures were taken in different types of weather and in different types of forest.