Raum simply affirms an undefined ‘space’, and with this work for Angle the Japanese photographer Hayahisa Tomiyasu selects a tiny slice of the richness of public space. An observation of a lizard basking in the sun on a summer’s day in Zürich has led to a photographic sequence in black and white – in portrait as well as landscape format. The demarcation of the photographic space – the extremely limited detail – is consistently kept low, around ground level.
A diagonal across asphalt, a knob, nails stuck in a white board – all of these might grab your attention before the little lizard, unremarkable despite its reptilian features. Almost invisible, but in motion from picture to picture, the lizard darts under something that looks like a garage door, and is an elusive subject. Soon only the tail is visible, then it is quite gone, until it peeps out again. Seeking out animals and letting the photography be dictated by their inscrutable movements has earlier interested Tomiyasu, as when he saw a fox from his window and tried to monitor it, ready with his camera. A ping-pong table outside became the focal point of everyday observations over the course of five years (his previous book TTP, 2018).
Through the sequential and the serial, with a point of departure in the close surroundings, Tomiyasu is preoccupied with new views of various territories in the shared space where we are separated from others’ invisible boundaries. Here the animals are subject to an alternative, instinct-driven logic. But humans too operate with distance, marking and ownership. An urge for invisibility and camouflage can appear on the radar at any time, and make us want to scuttle away like a lizard.
