Steidlville

Since the 1970s, photographer Ken Ohara has concentrated his efforts on the portrayal of mankind. Ohara, who moved from Tokyo to New York in 1962, first became known in 1970 through the publication of his conceptual book ONE, which contains more than 500 tight close-ups of faces. Some of these photographs were first exhibited at MoMA in 1974 in New York. In the 30 years since then, Ohara has continued his portrait studies, creating in the process an always-changing interaction between photographer and subject. Seven projects in greatly varied formats made between 1970 and 2003, are presented for the first time in their entirety in this extensive retrospective book and exhibition.
Ohara’s most significant series show different approaches and experiments with portraiture — from radical close-ups of hundreds of anonymous faces, a self-portrait made up of several photos which the photographer shot every minute for a period of 24 hours, to journals covering one year in which 365 photos were presented in the form of a leporello fold.
Included here are photographs made by others for Ohara and a more recent piece of work which contains more than 100 portraits in which the exposure period for each face exceeded one hour.
In its breadth, the work of Ken Ohara offers one of the most intense examinations of space and time in photographic portraiture and provokes a re-thinking of the limits of photographic depiction.