This is one of the few images from the Japan series that depicts the interior space of a building – a wide corridor or wooden pavilion at the end of which a door opens on to the vegetation outside. Its outline is given by a rectangle of light that contrasts strongly with the internal shade and which establishes the threshold of transition.

But it is the oblique orientation of the composition that makes it striking. In a country of frequent earthquakes, this drastic tilting of a building is a distinct possibility and a source of anguish; however, something tells us that the exaggerated angle of inclination is fabricated by the photographer, who could not have been here calmly photographing this shot if it were collapsing. Thus situated within the certainty of an aesthetic choice, we feel that something must be underlined in the psychological dimension associated with it– the place is solid and sensitive, empty and tense, closed and open, grounded and sliding, large and restricted, real and improbable.

Leonor Nazaré
Curator at the CAM