"What remains is future" were words written on a bag I saw someone carrying at Yoshihiko Ueda's new exhibition "A life with Camera." It's the same phrase that appeared on badges Patti Smith handed out in New York nearly 10 years ago. Fittingly, her portrait now hangs among 300 photographs, which were taken by Ueda from the age of 24 over a period of 35 years.
After assisting photographers Masanobu Fukuda and Taiji Arata, Ueda began work as a commercial photographer in 1982, and in recent years he has moved into film. "A life with Camera," however, doesn't present itself as a product of a commercial career spent working with the likes of Suntory.
Instead, the exhibition expresses a travelog of personal connections — from his "Portrait" series to images of India and of the Scottish lowlands, all arranged as expressions of desire and intent. Ueda's imagery is intimate: Be it of the mountain paths of Yakushima or the Quinault forest of America, there is a ripple of querying detail that also winds its way through the dress of choreographer Ushio Amagatsu and even the face of Miles Davis.