Your new post is loading...
Kayo Ume, from 'Ume-me' (2004)
Jennifer Pastore
One of the highlights of my art-going year was Kayo Ume’s exhibit at Tokyo Opera City. I was won over by the way Ume’s series of quirky, serendipitous, and touching snapshots of daily life add up to more than the sum of their parts. Taken on their own, pictures of a pigeon landing on a salaryman’s shoulders, school kids mugging for the camera, superheroes lined up behind the wheelchairs of the elderly, and similar scenes could be merely amusing, and Ume might be regarded as simply a photographer with a good eye and an unpretentious sense of humor. In aggregate, however, and particularly in the large-format photography at Opera City, Ume’s pictures remind us of the tenderness, joy, and surprise to be found in all of life’s bizarre, sweet, and fleeting moments.
