Back to Yuko Ishii Gallery

I live in the foothills of the North Cascades in WA, where I have been strongly influenced by the ambience of the rural life. In nature I feel invisible things and hear beautiful sounds which I have never witnessed in city life.

 I have a keen interest in matters spiritualistic and psychological. When I photograph subjects, I try to communicate their spirits and look for the unexpected imagery that emerges from the activity of my subconscious psyche. It is the same process as when I interpret the dreams – dream images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. The dream opens the way to inner sympathy and intellectual comprehension. Therefore, something unknown is what I always want to perceive through my art.

 

There are themes of memory, dreams, paradox, and symbolism in each series. I weave many different narratives together using visual metaphors to translate the human psyche and explore the unknown concealed in nature. Each image contains some clues to the story, but there is no explanation of the drama unfolding. No one reveals the hidden stories because this is not only visual but also poetry which has to be inexplicable allusion. My background as a musician and poet allows me to sharpen and expand a whole range of elements together, and intuit the spiritual matters more into my everyday life.

                                                                                                                                                                             

My goal is to capture special moments in time and space that make one slip into a completely different world, in which visible and invisible are merged, united perfectly in beautiful ways - images that evoke enigmatic emotions between real and unreal.