In Search of the Lost Image...

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Today I solved, completely through happenstance, a conundrum that has taxed me for forty-some years since I graduated college in 1978. I've always had a vague memory of an image that struck me back in my college days from some book in the library there. For some reason, I couldn't remember the name of the photographer or any title for the image itself: all I had was a kind of vague gestalt of the picture in the back of my mind.

A couple of days ago, we were browsing the bookshelves in our local Oxfam shop and I came upon a copy of "Basic Critical Theory for Photographers" by Ashley Le Grange from Focal Press. Although I've got most of the original source material used in the book, I figured the extra stuff mentioned plus the overall commentary on the other would be a good bouncing-off point for future reading/writing: and it was only £1.99 to boot, so I bought it. This morning I was thumbing through the reference pages and saw the name of a photographer I instantly recognised: Eikoh Hosoe. The memory of the image, the name of the artist and the original book in which I had first encountered both, coalesced in one of those wonderful 'gotcha' moments. The image is pictured above. Magic.

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