Twee Japanse meisjes in een tuin in Kioto 1900 - 1907

T. Enami made this stereoscopic albumen print of two Japanese girls in a Kyoto garden at some point, though the exact date is unknown. Look at how the brown tonality wraps everything in a blanket of nostalgia, a feeling that time is both present and past. What grabs me is the texture, which feels less like a photo and more like a memory. The light etches forms out of a murky background, and the girls emerge from the scene, with a sharp and intimate presence. Their patterned kimonos become little abstract paintings when you get up close. I'm particularly drawn to the way Enami plays with the doubled image, and how each eye gives a slightly different perspective, like the way we see in dreams, always half here, half there. There is a quiet beauty in the doubling, and a sense of exchange between worlds, calling to mind Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographic series of wax sculptures, which also toy with doubling, representation, and reality.