Far East

For four autumns, Géraldine Lay photographed Japan. Each year, she found the same white light that makes the colours burst. Travelling by train from one point to another, she gradually moved away from the big cities, in search of a less spectacular daily life, more rugged perhaps, and in search of new material, both literally and figuratively.

For her images abound in wefts and textures, from which emerge here and there intense flats of colour. It is difficult not to think of painting. However, the photographer, perhaps following in the footsteps of the author of In Praise of Shadows, the writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, plays with the shadow as never before. A strangeness runs through the landscapes as well as through his characters—something unresolved that catches us.

Through correspondences that are as subtle as they are obvious, the viewer’s eye wanders from image to image. From the four autumns, 50 pictures have been carefully selected. They make up a portrait of Japan, the story of a Western photographer’s itinerary in the heart of a country where four cubic rocks by the sea unleash an entire imaginary universe.