Hisaji Hara - review

In one photograph, "A Study of 'The Passage du Commerce-Saint-André'", the girl stands in a leafy garden lost in thought, while a young man, possibly in uniform, strides purposefully away. Everything about the photograph is painterly, from its composition to the soft light and shadows and the blurry leafiness of the trees. There is a strangeness here, too, but it is not the strangeness of a Balthus painting, rather the heightened formality and unrealness of a staged photograph. And even in the most instantly recognisable compositions - the young woman at her most languorously suggestive, gazing into a mirror or draped on a chair before a window - the dark suggestiveness of the paintings is replaced by something else, a mood that is altogether less provocative and, at times, almost serene in its calmness.