[Audio Guide]
These photographs show glass bottles for medicine. The contents are mostly used up, and water droplets from condensation are clustered around the tops. If you look at the bottom of the image, you will notice that light shining from diagonally behind the glass passes through the liquid, creating patterns of light and shadow. It is a perfectly ordinary scene, but our attention is drawn to how the liquid changes in various ways and takes on multiple aspects, and how the appearance of the light is transformed depending on the slightest shift of angle. The endless combination of changing subjects and light, combined with the black backgrounds, evokes the process of producing a photograph, in which light passing through a lens forms an image on film. Since this Bottles series, photographer Yamamoto Tadasu has been focusing on the protean nature of water. This series is the starting point of his work, capturing ever-changing water in myriad forms, from ponds and waterfalls deep in the mountains, to rivers flowing through cities, to steam from factories and so on.
