Books, crafted by the human hand, conceal countless certainties of the past within them. Deceased though nevertheless true. Particularly illustrated reference books or encyclopedias, and the glimpses they give of our practical desire to intervene in ‘reality’, with their archiving of past findings and discoveries long-ago assimilated. All of this laid out in words and images whose permutations rely on a purely human arbitration of events and history. The places and beings and their names and similarities, the seasons and nations and organizational structures overlay patterns that allow us to reorganize and see anew. However even when a book is approached in the right and correct way, the world that appears for us is nothing more than one. In the act of intimating oneself with a book the world of other separate books becomes hidden from us. Our knowing of these other discoveries and connections–ways of piecing the world together–is hindered, nevertheless such connections exist and cannot be denied.

Who was it that said the furthest page in the world is the back of the page we are on? The world we see and know is expressed in what is essentially a random code, based on the particular system of recognition that we as humans have found for ourselves. This code and therefore this world can be found on a single page. “Sightseeing” is the name I have given to this process of exploring a single page. It is perhaps akin to Rousseau’s discoveries of landscape, a process of feeling the Alpen air from that one page. These images–the two faces of a single page blended together with sunlight–represent my own attempt to express this world which lays within.

- Ryoichi Suzuki