Sunlight

Rather than a specific named place, this print takes light itself as its subject — the way direct sunlight falls on architectural surfaces, garden elements, or a combination of built and natural forms in the middle of the day. Nishijima's handling of strong sunlight would require the same skill deployed in his evening-light prints: reserving areas of the paper for the brightest highlights while building up surrounding tones through multiple overprinted blocks. A traditional Japanese streetscape or garden under direct sun offers a very different set of formal problems than the soft diffusion of overcast or interior light, and the resulting composition would likely be more graphically bold, with stronger contrast and more defined edges than his atmospheric seasonal prints.