Yamamoto who had become acquainted with Surrealism through magazines such as ciné and Shi to Touron (Poetry and Debate) as well as having the opportunity to encounter the works of Jean Arp, Hans Bellmer, and Man Ray from a young age, references Rene Magritte’s L'homme au journal (Man with a Newspaper) (1928), within his work “My Thin-aired Room.” The work comprises of four images that narratively convey the evaporation of his very own existence within the context of a thin-aired room. The work is not a mere imitation, but is that which in itself essentially represents Yamamoto’s practice during the 1950s, of depicting his very own experimental spirit through means of photography.
