Yesterday, while heading home from a visit to the New York offices of the SCI FI Channel at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, I happened to pass the International Center of Photography. I’d often walked by the building before, since my Dad used to work at McGraw-Hill, which was just a few blocks further up the Avenue of the Americas, but I’d never been moved to visit.

But this time, I noticed that one of the current exhibitions was Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan, and since Irene and I had visited Japan last year, I was intrigued. So I took a later train home than I might have and instead toured the museum.

There were many interesting images on display, but the ones that interested me the most were by Tomoko Sawada. Check out the photograph below, from her series “School Days.”

There’s something hypnotizing about the image, but until I read the descriptive materials, I didn’t realize what made the picture so unusual. This particular aspect of the photo was perhaps affecting on me on a subconscious level.

Can you—without rushing off to Google the answer—figure out what I’m talking about?