Masumi Hayashi: Panoramic Photo Collages 1976–2006
Hayashi’s gesture of both expanding perspective and cutting up the visual field compels viewers to contemplate a landscape’s making and the evidence of human intervention that is often left behind.
Text by Barbara Tannenbaum
Hardcover / 15 x 9.25 inches
62 color images / 168 pages
ISBN: 9781942185208
MASUMI HAYASHI (1945-2006) was best known for her technique of creating photo collages by suturing together images into a grid format. Exploring a range of subjects, Hayashi trained her lens on Rust Belt landscapes, EPA Superfund sites, Japanese American internment camps from World War II, and decaying prisons.
With these sites as her points of departure, Hayashi crafted images with multiple perspectives, creating panoramas where seams unabashedly cut across landscapes. Using the panorama, a format typically associated with tourism, Hayashi’s images are instead attuned to the way social ills are expressed in space, extending views of landscape and infrastructure that exceed 360 degrees.