In Japan, children walk to school in a group, with other children, instead of being accompanied by adults. In compact and not entirely organised single file, a group of teenage schoolgirls is moving from right to left across the space of the image. The uniform homogenises them, rendering even less distinct these people whose faces we cannot see. Thus defined, the human cluster is concentrated in a horizontal band that occupies the top third of the image, leaving free and uniformly smooth the entire remaining area – a path of earth or asphalt, an empty zone whose function, in the composition of the image, is to direct the gaze to that more populated area.

Captured and framed from a distance, the image contains two large contrasting areas and suggests a distance that also evokes time, memory, a critical point of view or a simple imposition of an effective and impressive formal stratagem.

Leonor Nazaré
Curator at the CAM