When I spoke with curator Michiko Kasahara about the Tokyo Museum of Photography's new exhibition, "A Kiss in the Dark," the first thing she wanted to explain was the show's intriguing title. Her catalog essay expands:

Asako Narahashi's "Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water" (2000)

"The metaphor concealed in the word 'kiss' is truly this sense of a presentiment of the unseen future. [These photographs] reflect contemporary values. Extremely subtle, complicated, silent and tranquil, still, the works are charged with a slight fever like a 'kiss in the dark.' " (Curiously, the English title precedes the Japanese -- "Tesaguri ni kissu" -- which has a different nuance, along the lines of "groping for a kiss.")