Il festival internazionale di fotografia a Kyoto Kyotographie ospita una retrospettiva di Yu Yamauchi intitolata “Jinen” (natura). Per la sua ultima serie di fotografie, Yamauchi si e’ isolato per nove mesi nelle foreste di Yakushima (prefettura di Kagoshima). Thu-Huong Ha intervista il fotografo per il Japan Times:

Yamauchi was born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1977. Despite his name — 山内 悠 means literally, “comfortable in a mountain” — he says he wasn’t much of a nature kid. The nearby river was muddy and polluted from surrounding factories, and when he first started taking photos, they were of people — his middle school classmates, and later a girlfriend — not natural landscapes.

Once, when his father chided him, “Why do you spend all that time in the mountains?What do you do there!” Yamauchi threw back, “You’re the one who gave me this name!”

Yu Yamauchi’s new exhibition, which closes in Kyoto on May 14, features photos from the nine years in which he lived alone for a month at a time among the thousands-year-old trees of Yakushima, Kagoshima Prefecture. The exhibit takes over the Kurogura building of Kondaya Genbei, down several tiny walkaway, hidden from sight from the main street. Each level of the space occupies a different stage in the photographer’s inner journey. Yu Yamauchi wanted to re-create the fear of first arriving in the dense forest and feeling like he was trapped inside – indeed inside myself – unable to see out. “I deliberately wanted to experience entering the forest at night, and that ultimately involved delving into a deep, dark parts within oneself” he says.