shashasha

For his new “Onsen” series, Japanese photographer Yusuke Yamatani visited wild hot springs – unmaintained hot springs that occur naturally – throughout Japan, inviting friends, family members and other interested people to come along with him. Rather than the hot springs themselves, Yamatani’s interest is in the human being, the way people react, relax, let loose and communicate around these wild onsen. His stylistically diverse photographs – Yamatani varies his techniques, formats, colors and approaches throughout the book – seem as if sent here from an some paradisiac place, as if Yamatani found Shangri La somewhere in the Japanese mountains. Through the interactions between the human being and nature, Yamatani recaptures something true and primordial about humans and the world.