Looking at some of my favourite art, today it’s Daido Moriyama, notably his Tights series. These are photos of his wife’s legs in fishnet tights. The abstracted images avoid the obvious potential for eroticism and focus on the combination of curves, shapes and patterns.
The lines and curves suggestively draw the eyes, almost asking for an intimacy, a touch. But whilst the subject matter is personal and private to Moriyama it is contrastingly distanced from any personality or character; It objectifies what is personal.
As a viewer, it seems to make me a voyeur, yet always a spectator. It is art on the cusp of the dispassionate abstract and passionate desire for more, to reach out and touch those curves, interested and yet denied: his wife, the unknown as a seducer.
