Ghosts Angels Beyond Light is the first monograph by Yohei Abe. Bringing together photography, poetry, and an accompanying musical component, the book unfolds as an exploration of memory, absence, and transformation. Images move between the visible and the sensed, tracing a quiet passage through longing, encounter, and return.

Drawing from myth, literature, and spiritual traditions—including Orpheus and Eurydice, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Japanese animism, and cross-cultural angelology—the work adopts the structure of a journey. Places recur, figures appear and dissolve, and fragments of dialogue emerge as signals rather than statements. Meaning is gathered gradually, through resonance rather than narrative certainty.

Ghosts Angels Beyond Light approaches photography as a form of communication across distance and time. The project remains open-ended, attentive to the fragility of memory and the possibility of continual transformation, inviting the viewer to inhabit a space where images, sound, and recollection overlap.

The book is accompanied by a living musical component created in collaboration with writer and music critic Kentaro Ogasawara (a.k.a. classicasobi). This evolving playlist extends the dialogue between sound and image, allowing perception to shift and meanings to reconfigure over time.

This work emerged from a period of profound rupture and listening. Rather than documenting a single event, it follows the traces left behind—gestures, places, and moments that continue to reverberate. Photography, text, and sound function here not as explanations, but as acts of attention, shaped by devotion to what remains unfinished.

First Edition
Soft cover
8x10 Inches
101 Pages

THE TEAM

Photographs by Yohei Abe
Words by Yohei Abe
Produced by dePAOLA Pictures
Producer and Editor Sage Backstrom
Associate Editor Grace Francisca de Paola
www.depolapictures.com

Supported by

Mark de Paola
Leica Akademie USA
Leica Store San Francisco

Printed by Brilliant Graphics, Exton, PA
Design by Jim Bonshock

PRESS

classicasobi, posted December 15th, 2025

Abe is an ordinary person, neither an art school graduate nor the child of artists, yet his book conveys both the creator’s intention and a universal charm. Each page evokes curiosity and questions, sometimes deeply personal, sometimes arising in interaction with friends or family. A single photograph may appear differently to different viewers at different times or in other contexts. The roughly 100-page book can feel like Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time in its depth, or a casual idea book in its accessibility.

Abe is a genius of perception. He captures what reacts to his senses, pressing the shutter in response to the sensed moment rather than preconception. Flexible, tolerant, and at times indifferent, his photographs reveal hidden codes reminiscent of musical melody, harmony, and flow.