Walking along a path in a park or public forest, a female figure is photographed from behind, in a movement in which her gait highlights the (as)symmetry of her body. The clothes and accessories are clearly Asian, the silhouette slender and fragile, as is common in these parts, and the hair styled in traditional fashion as well. The drawing on the back of her clothes is the logo of housemaids in Kyoto.

The two-dimensional quality of the image creates formal overlaps that do not exist in the real world, because that is what is fabricated by the photograph – a composition and a point of view.

The head and body, visible to the knees (or the point where the movement of the walk is articulated), cut a vertical space through the trees that seems like an inlay. Thus, the places where the walker’s gaze presumably wanders merge, in the image, with a large part of her body, despite the retaining, on the right-hand side, of the more open space of the path being travelled.

Leonor Nazaré
Curator at the CAM