Snow Country - Yukiguni: Honshu Winter Studies’ - Scott Rinckenberger Gallery

North Bend, WA (December 5th through May 31st, 2026) 

Yukiguni—Snow Country—defines the regions of Japan where Siberian winds cross the Sea of Japan and release some of the heaviest snowfall on earth. 

Over five winters in the mountains of central Honshu, these photographs explore the delicate graphicism that emerges from extreme conditions. The mountains near Hakuba and Myoko embody a striking juxtaposition: a delicate, graphic simplicity in the undulating foothills and the seeming fragility of resident flora like birch and bamboo, colliding with a savagery apparent in the rugged high alpine regions and the near-constant storms that batter these mountains with incredible amounts of snow and wind. 

“This is winter as both architect and eraser, where violence becomes sculptor and storms leave behind only the essential.

Working in black and white, these images distill the alpine environment to its essential elements—line, texture, negative space—revealing the quiet geometry that remains when excess is stripped away, leaving only a silencing blanket of snow.”  

- Scott Rinckenberger