The Light / Mustang | Momo Yamanishi | Roshin books 2025 [SIGNED]

"The signatire is on a separate leaflet"

"Momo Yamanishi studied metal casting at Tokyo University of the Arts and was also a member of the mountaineering club, having ventured to peaks such as Kilimanjaro and K2. One day, while trekking through the Himalayan mountain region, she discovered an ammonite fossil within a broken rock. It was a moment of realization—this land, now standing at an altitude of 5,000 meters, was once an ocean. Just as landscapes transform over vast stretches of time, light too continues to pour down without ceasing, etching itself onto the earth. Drawn to this interplay between time and light, Yamanishi began exploring the traces they leave behind, connecting the past to the present.

This project began in Mustang, a land that was once home to an ancient kingdom. Using materials she gathered there, Yamanishi built her own pinhole camera. Just as molten metal takes the shape of its mold in casting, light, too, passes through the tiny aperture of the camera, forming an image over time. Through this process, she seeks to give form to light and time—things that cannot be touched.

The images captured by the pinhole camera blur and soften the light, yet still inscribe the contours of the world onto film. They quietly record the memory of this place, which was once an ocean and once a kingdom." - Publisher's statement

"I can remember each moment I took these pinhole photographs. The images that formed in the darkroom as I shone light on the film contain time within them, just like the ammonite fossil I picked up in the Himalayas. As they bring back scenes buried deep in my memory, the intangible shapes drawn by light become a corridor that connects past and future." - From the afterword