Framed

Taken delivery today of the October issue of Artforum magazine: a publication that I read assiduously when I was at art college back in the seventies. My subscription is to the original US edition, which is still produced in its original [ten-and-half inch] square format, unlike the European edition, which sadly shoehorns the content into A4. In my live online Artforum feed today was a reprint of a 1983 article on Eikoe Hosoe, whose death I mentioned the other day, which event must have been after the print deadline for the journal. The image which features at the head of the article is "Kamaitachi #8", 1965, as seen on the printout above. I've mentioned this image before as it was lodged in my memory from college days, but without reference: an enigma and indeed an enigmatic image in itself, dreamlike in its [un]familiarity. 

The reality of its production is steeped in Japanese legend: the Kamaitachi of the series' title being a demon that haunted the rice fields.

The figure in the photograph is in fact a dancer. To quote the 1983 Artforum article [by Mark Holborn]: 'Every stage of the production was ritualised. "Kamaitachi" was not only a series of photographs within a two-dimensional convention, but a dance drama as well. The dancer, Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of the Ankoku Buto-Ha (Black Dance Theatre), danced within the space of the photographs when the exhibition opened at the Nikon Salon in Tokyo.' For myself, the image of the figure perched on the fence offered both that dreamlike open narrative and a compositional gambit I cleave to, to this day: landscapes rendered in the 'portrait' format. Like the square format of Artforum it challenges traditional conventions of 'frames' and framing. Whatever works is what works...