In the last room of the exhibition, I mistook a photograph for a portrait of a living person. It was a small stone monk. It was stone the whole time.

Today's single photograph is one I can put you inside of, because I was standing right there. Final room of the Nakahira exhibition in Tokyo, the late color work, and one frame stopped me cold: a small shrine statue that read, completely, as a living face. I stepped closer to catch the trick, and that's what undid me. There is no trick. Frontal, level, plain daylight. A thing, being a thing, and looking back.

I have to be honest about something: I can't give you this photograph's title, because late Nakahira photographs mostly don't have individual titles. These frames come from his last lifetime show, Kirikae, Osaka, 2011. A photograph with no name, of a statue with no name. Al ...