shashasha

“Nannokenai” is Japanese photographer Osamu Yokonami’s first photobook, originally published in 2007 and winner of the 11th Shinpusha Photography Award.
For the book, Yokonami chronicles his father’s everyday life in a seaside town. We see his father in everyday scenarios in his house, taking baths, playing with his grandchildren, meeting friends, working in the garden, taking strolls through the town and fields, going for a swim. Something about the father, a peculiarity, is never explained: we see him wear a loose bald cap on his head in every picture. The oddness of the cap – never mentioned, never focused on – combined with the unparticularity of the everyday life that Yokonami captured in beautiful, understated pictures, creates a strange, captivating sense of melancholy.
As a first photobook, “Nannokenai” hints at the conceptual brilliance of Yokonami’s later works and presents a series of photographs that deserves attention for its peculiar appeal.