Girls Delta – Untitled feat. Rio Kakizaki (2017)

Parallax refers to the way different viewpoints change the way something is seen.

This image is staged so the viewer is allowed access to a personal/private moment under the guise of experiencing someone elses POV.

With mirrored reflections–it’s almost always an either/or situation: either the subject sees their reflection ideally or things are cheated to favor the cameras access to the ideal reflection.

Given the position of the mirror above, this is cheated to privilege the camera. In other words, despite the fiction it purports–i.e. that Kakizaki is curiously checking out her own genitalia in the mirror–it is unlikely that given the position and placement of everything that she’s got any sort of instructional view.

Thus, to the extent that this image might give someone permission to embrace curiosity about their body, I think it’s useful.

To the extent that it shrouds its voyeurism by co-opting a woman’s curiosity about her own body, it’s critically and conceptually underdeveloped and lazily executed.