Ghosts Angels Beyond Light (produced by dePAOLA Pictures, and supported by Leica Akademie USA and Leica Store San Francisco.) is the first monograph by Yohei Abe. Conceived in the wake of his wife Kana’s passing in May 2021, the book brings together photography, poetry, and an accompanying music selection as a meditation on loss, memory, and transcendence.

The project draws inspiration from myth and literature—Orpheus and Eurydice, Wagner’s Liebestod, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Dante’s Divine Comedy—as well as Japanese animism and cross-cultural angelology. Its narrative unfolds as a journey: from grief and longing, to decoding messages from Kana before her death, to traversing the underworld and revisiting shared places across the globe. In doing so, Abe gathers signs, memories, and fragments of dialogue with Kana, ultimately shaping a new language of hope and transcendence.

The work is both an act of communication and a collaboration with “the other side”—a gesture of gratitude, acceptance, and devotion. It reflects on the fragility of memory and the passing of time, while remaining open to continual transformation.

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, offering shifting interpretations of life, memory, and shared history. As Abe describes, the project is a continuing experiment in perception—one that invites viewers and listeners to experience how sound can reshape the meaning of images, and how memory itself is a form of resonance.