Round trip I

The opening plate in Hamanishi's Round trip series, this intaglio print establishes the visual premise that successive states will revisit and rework. Listed as an etching, the work belongs to Hamanishi's sustained engagement with the mezzotint technique, in which a copper plate is first rocked across its full surface to produce a uniform burr capable of holding ink at maximum density. The image is then drawn in reverse, with smoother burnished areas reading as light against the prepared black ground. The Round trip designation introduces the conceit of a journey examined from multiple vantage points across the series, with the first plate functioning as point of departure. Hamanishi works in a tradition extended in the twentieth century by Yozo Hamaguchi, whose mezzotints of fruit and shells established the contemporary Japanese mastery of the medium that Hamanishi has continued and developed across his career.