日本攝影家小林伸幸（Nobuyuki Kobayashi）長期以 Portrait of Nature — Myriads of Gods（自然的肖像—八百萬神）為題，拍攝山岳、森林、岩石、樹木與水。
2021 年移居埼玉縣秩父之後，他與自然之間的距離再次改變。
奧秩父不再只是需要前往的拍攝地，而成為每日生活其中的環境。春天的新綠、夏季濃密的森林、秋日逐漸轉紅的山色，以及冬季覆雪後的寂靜，在一次次季節更迭之中反覆出現。
此次個展 Portrait of Nature: Oku-Chichibu《自然的肖像：奧秩父》，便從這樣的日常開始。
當風景成為肖像
「Portrait of Nature」是一個值得停留的命名。
自然攝影通常從人的視線開始：攝影者來到一處風景，決定位置與構圖，最後將眼前所見轉化為影像。
而 Portrait 所隱含的關係並不完全相同。
拍攝一個人的肖像時，被攝者不只是被觀看的對象。有時，他原本沉浸在自己的狀態之中，直到某個瞬間回過神來，視線轉向鏡頭。原先單向的觀看，在那一刻突然獲得了回應。小林的作品也讓人想到這種微妙的轉變：樹木、岩石與水並不只是組成風景的元素，而逐漸成為各自具有時間與存在感的個體。
日本「八百萬神」的自然觀，成為小林長期創作的重要背景。
山川草木與萬物之中，都可能存在某種值得敬畏的力量。
然而這裡所說的「神性」，像是一種觀看的位置：
承認自然並不因人的觀看而存在，也並不完全屬於人的理解。
當一個人長時間生活在同一片山林附近，眼前的自然也不再只是一次性的景觀。
相同的岩石、樹木與山岳經過四季反覆出現，在人的生活之外，持續著另一種更長的時間。
自然不再只是我們凝視的對象，而彷彿開始回望我們。
在快門以前
小林的攝影常常從行走開始。
他曾提到，有時離開家時並沒有明確的目的地，只決定一個方向，再帶著器材進入山林。持續前進，直到某個地方讓他停下。
與其說攝影者找到了一個拍攝對象，有時反而更像是某個地方先讓自己被感覺到。
這樣的觀看，也與小林長期使用的 8×10 大畫幅底片相機 *註1 密不可分。
8×10 的重要性，或許不只在於它能留下多少細節，而在於它使觀看變得無法倉促。
大型相機、腳架與底片被帶進山林；找到位置之後，仍需架起相機，在黑布下觀看毛玻璃上的影像，反覆調整構圖與焦點，直到最後才按下快門。
從感受到某個地方，到真正留下影像，中間始終存在一段無法被省略的時間。而這段時間，使攝影與肖像再次產生了關係。
拍攝一個人的肖像，往往也不是從按下快門才開始。攝影者與被攝者首先共享了一段時間：觀看、等待，直到某種距離慢慢形成。
在小林的山林裡，那位「被攝者」變成了一棵樹、一塊岩石，或一道流經山間的水。他曾以近似這樣的方式描述自己的攝影：
與其說「我要拍攝你」，更像是提出一個請求——
「請允許我拍攝你。」
或許正因如此，小林作品裡真正被延長的，從來不只是曝光的時間。
而是快門落下以前，那段等待一幅肖像成立的時間。
比一次曝光更長的時間
快門按下之後，小林作品裡的時間仍然繼續。
8×10 底片上的影像，最終透過 Platinum Palladium Print 鉑鈀印相 *註2，被呈現在日本傳統的 細川和紙 Hosokawa Washi *註3 上。
他以極慢的方式取得一瞬，又以極耐久的方式保存它。
鉑與鈀形成細密而深沉的灰階，進入和紙可見的植物纖維之間。影像因此不像只是附著在一張紙的表面，更接近時間在材料之中留下的一層沉積。
這樣的媒材，也使《奧秩父》裡關於時間的問題逐漸浮現。
攝影捕捉的是一個瞬間；然而眼前的岩石、樹木與山岳，可能早在攝影者出生以前便已經存在，也將在他離去之後繼續存在。
當我們站在今天的山林裡，也可能正面對著數百年前的人曾經看過的風景。
《奧秩父》所記錄的是小林每日生活周遭持續變化的自然。
但在春夏秋冬一次次更替之中，他所感受到的，似乎並不只是變化。而是一股遠超過個人生命尺度的時間。
這也讓攝影本身產生了一個有趣的矛盾：它用極短的一次曝光，面對遠比人更漫長的存在。
於是，小林選擇以緩慢的相機走近它，再以能夠長久保存的材料留下它。
最後留在照片裡的，便不只是一片山林的樣貌。
也是某一天，一個人站在比自己更古老的自然面前，停下腳步，架起相機，等待了一段時間。直到觀看不再只是單向。
一幅自然的肖像，或許並不是人如何觀看自然。
而是在足夠漫長的凝視之後，我們突然意識到，自然也正在回望我們。
文字｜Eric Chang（Atelier CHUZI）
小林伸幸 Nobuyuki Kobayashi
1970 年出生於日本埼玉縣橫瀨町。1993 年起以攝影師身分獨立工作，早期主要從事廣告與雜誌的人像、時尚攝影。
2001 年於紐約學習美術基礎與另類攝影印相技術，之後逐漸發展以自然為主體的個人創作。
他以 Portrait of Nature — Myriads of Gods 為長期創作系列，使用 8×10 大畫幅相機拍攝自然，
並將鉑鈀印相與日本傳統細川和紙結合。自 2005 年起，作品陸續於日本、歐洲與台灣等地展出。
Notes
註1｜8×10 大畫幅底片相機
8×10 指單張底片約為 8 × 10 英吋（約 20 × 25 公分）。
相較一般 35mm 或中片幅底片，其感光面積大幅增加，可記錄細緻的影像與明暗層次；
相對地，相機、腳架與底片匣也更加龐大。拍攝通常需架設相機，並在黑布下透過毛玻璃進行構圖與對焦。
註2｜Platinum Palladium Print 鉑鈀印相
以鉑、鈀等貴金屬形成影像的古典攝影印相方式，以細膩的灰階層次與高度保存穩定性著稱。
感光材料直接作用於紙張，因此紙材本身的質地也參與最終影像。
註3｜細川和紙 Hosokawa Washi
日本傳統手工和紙，以楮纖維為主要原料。長纖維形成紙張的韌性與自然肌理；
當攝影影像呈現在其上時，纖維與紙面細微的不均質感也成為作品的一部分。
Portrait of Nature: Oku-Chichibu｜Nobuyuki Kobayashi Solo Exhibition
自然的肖像：奧秩父 ｜小林伸幸 個展
展期｜10/1—11/1 2026
企劃統籌：Bridge Builder
展覽地點：ZASSO 草也 (台中市西區五權西六街72號)
Every Inspiring Moment｜Into the Forest, When the Gaze Returns
Japanese photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi has long worked under the title Portrait of Nature — Myriads of Gods, photographing mountains, forests, rocks, trees and water. After moving to Chichibu, Saitama, in 2021, his distance from nature began to shift once again. Oku-Chichibu was no longer somewhere he travelled to in search of photographs. It became the landscape of everyday life. New growth in spring, dense forests in summer, mountains turning red and yellow in autumn, and the silence of winter snow returned year after year.
His current exhibition, Portrait of Nature: Oku-Chichibu, begins from this condition of living within the landscape.
When Landscape Becomes Portrait
Portrait of Nature is a title worth pausing over.
Landscape photography often begins with the human gaze: a photographer arrives at a place,
chooses a position and composition, and transforms what lies before them into an image.
A portrait implies a slightly different relationship.
When photographing another person, the sitter is never simply an object before the lens. There are moments when someone, absorbed in their own state, suddenly becomes aware of the camera and turns toward it. A gaze that had travelled in one direction is, for an instant, returned.
Kobayashi's photographs evoke something close to this shift. Trees, rocks and water cease to function merely as elements within a landscape and begin to appear as individual presences, each carrying its own duration and sense of existence.
The Japanese idea of Yaoyorozu no Kami — the myriads of gods — has long formed an important background to Kobayashi's practice. Mountains, rivers, trees and other forms of life may each contain a presence worthy of reverence. Yet this sense of the sacred need not be understood as a literal image of a god. It may instead describe a position from which to look: an acknowledgement that nature neither exists because we observe it nor belongs entirely to human understanding.
Living beside the same mountains over time further complicates that relationship. Rocks, trees and ridgelines return through season after season, carrying on a duration that exceeds the rhythm of an individual life. A portrait of nature, then, may not mean making nature resemble a human subject. It may begin at the moment when the landscape we observe seems to reclaim a position of its own.
When nature is no longer merely something we look at, but somehow begins to look back.
Before the Shutter
Kobayashi's photographs often begin with walking.
He has spoken of setting out at times without a precise destination, choosing little more than a direction before carrying his equipment into the mountains. He continues until something in a particular place makes him stop. Rather than simply finding a subject, the experience can seem almost as though the place has first allowed itself to be felt.
This way of seeing is closely connected to the 8×10 large-format film camera *Note 1 that Kobayashi has long used.
The importance of the 8×10 camera may lie not only in the amount of detail it can record, but in the simple fact that it makes looking impossible to rush.
The camera, tripod and film must be carried into the landscape. Once a place has been chosen, the camera is assembled; beneath a dark cloth, the image is studied on the ground glass while composition and focus are slowly adjusted before an exposure is finally made. Between sensing a place and making a photograph lies a period of time that cannot be removed. It is here that photography begins to resemble portraiture once again.
A portrait rarely begins at the instant the shutter is released. Photographer and sitter have already shared time beforehand — looking, waiting, allowing a certain distance to form. In Kobayashi's forest, the sitter may be a tree, a rock, or water moving through the mountains. He has described his approach in a way that feels less like a declaration than a request:
“May I photograph you?”
Perhaps what is truly prolonged in Kobayashi's photography, then, is not exposure itself.
It is the time before the shutter — the time required for a portrait to become possible.
A Time Longer Than an Exposure
Time continues after the shutter closes.
Images made on 8×10 film are eventually realised through platinum-palladium printing *Note 2 on traditional Hosokawa Washi *Note 3.
Kobayashi obtains an instant through an unusually slow process, then preserves it through unusually enduring materials.
The subtle tonal range of platinum and palladium settles into the visible plant fibres of the washi. The photograph begins to feel less like an image resting upon paper than a layer of time deposited within the material itself. These material choices bring another scale of time into Oku-Chichibu.
Photography records an instant, while the rocks, trees and mountains before the camera may have existed long before the photographer was born and may remain long after he is gone. Standing in the mountains today, we may even be looking at the same forms once seen by people centuries before us. Oku-Chichibu records the continually changing nature of Kobayashi's everyday surroundings. Yet through the repeated cycle of the seasons, what gradually emerges is not only change. It is the sensation of a duration far larger than an individual human life. Photography therefore contains a quiet contradiction: a brief exposure is asked to face something that exists on an entirely different scale of time.
Kobayashi approaches that contradiction with a slow camera and materials capable of enduring.
What remains in the photograph is therefore not simply the appearance of a forest. It is also the trace of a day when someone stood before a nature older than himself, stopped, unfolded a camera, and waited. Until looking was no longer one-way.
A portrait of nature may not ultimately be about how we look at nature.
It may begin when, after looking long enough, we suddenly realise that nature is looking back at us.
Words by Eric Chang (Atelier CHUZI)
About the Photographer｜Nobuyuki Kobayashi
Born in Japan in 1970, Nobuyuki Kobayashi graduated from Tokyo Visual Arts and later studied the fundamentals of fine art and alternative photographic processes in New York. His early career included portrait, fashion and commercial photography before his practice gradually turned toward the natural world.
His long-term series Portrait of Nature — Myriads of Gods centres on mountains, forests, rocks, trees and water, combining large-format photography with platinum-palladium printing on traditional Hosokawa Washi. Since 2005, his work has been presented in Japan, Europe, Taiwan and internationally.
Notes
Note 1｜8×10 Large-format Film Camera
8×10 refers to an individual sheet of film measuring approximately 8 × 10 inches, or 20 × 25 centimetres. Its much larger surface area allows exceptionally fine detail and tonal information to be recorded, while requiring a considerably larger camera, tripod and film holder. The image is generally composed and focused on a ground-glass screen beneath a dark cloth.
Note 2｜Platinum-Palladium Print
A historic photographic printing process in which platinum and palladium metals form the final image. It is valued for its subtle tonal range and exceptional archival stability. As the sensitising solution is applied directly to paper, the physical character of the paper also becomes part of the image.
Note 3｜Hosokawa Washi
A traditional Japanese handmade paper made primarily from kōzo, or paper-mulberry fibre. Its long fibres give the paper both strength and a distinctive natural texture. When used as a photographic support, the fibres and subtle irregularities of its surface remain visible as part of the finished work.
Exhibition
Portrait of Nature: Oku-Chichibu｜Nobuyuki Kobayashi Solo Exhibition
自然的肖像：奧秩父｜小林伸幸 個展
October 1 — November 1, 2026
Tea Gathering｜October 3, 3–5 pm
ZASSO, 72 Wuquan West 6th St., West District, Taichung
Exhibition Coordination｜Bridge Builder