is a Japanese

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

. Ohara is most noted for his series of photographs titled ''One'', in which he presents faces with a standard size and tone. Ohara moved from

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

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in 1962, and came to public attention in 1970 with the publication of ''One'', which contained more than 500 tight close-ups of faces. In the 30 years since then, Ohara has continued his

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

studies in greatly varied forms. This extensive collection presents seven projects in their entirety, pieces made between 1970 and 2003, some of which were first exhibited at the

New York Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the ...

, and others that have rarely been seen. They range from radical close-ups of hundreds of anonymous faces to a self-portrait made up of photos shot every minute for a period of 24 hours to journals—Ohara once documented a year in 365 images on an

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

fold. Also included are portraits in which the exposure period for each face exceeded an hour. Ohara's work offers an intense examination of space and time in portraiture and provokes a rethinking of the limits of photographic depiction. Ohara resides in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

with his wife, Coralee and two children Sophia and Teiji John.

References

*''Nihon shashinka jiten'' () / ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers.'' Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. . Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. Japanese photographers 1942 births Living people {{Japan-photographer-stub