KEN OHARA | ONE

In 1970, while working as an assistant to Hiro and Richard Avedon, Ken Ohara emerged as a young artist with his seminal ONE series. Using a set of strict parameters, Ohara created his systematic series of tight portraits of over 500 diverse New Yorkers in the same format, size and style: abruptly zoomed in and cropped on the neutral expressions.
Uniformly positioned in the frame, and selecting only faces without facial hair or overly obvious makeup, the series is at once an exploration of homogeneity and diversity, individuality and universality.
The probing and repetitive framing troubles notions of similarity and difference, as the viewer abruptly encounters the eyes, mouth and nose of a litany of visages.
Using a format reminiscent of the techniques of passport photographs or mugshots, and yet withholding all identifying details, the encounter with the anonymous, probing portraits challenges ideas of classification, and constructions of identity.
Collected into a telephone-book like tome, Ohara’s indexical artist book was originally published by Tsukiji Shokan in 1970. When he saw the book, Avedon encouraged Ohara to take a copy to the renowned photography curator John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art. In a subsequent letter, Szarkowski wrote to Avedon, “The Ohara book is a very strange experience indeed. I don’t really know quite what to make of it, but I think that somehow everyone should look at it.” The curator did his best to make this happen — the artist book was made available at the MoMA bookstore and in 1974 Szarkowski included Ohara in the exhibition New Japanese Photography.
Nearly twenty years later, photography had expanded into monumental scales and Ohara revisited the series, selecting sixteen portraits for GRAIN (1993). Ohara prepared enlarged sheets from the negatives produced for the ONE series. Originally printed at 27 x 21.9 cm in GRAIN the works were recomposed into 9 by 9 grids, forming large 240 x 197.2 cm portraits made of a compilation of 81 individual prints.
Ohara was born in Japan in 1962 and moved to the US when he was 19. His works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, The Museum of Modern Art, The Getty, LACMA, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Fotomuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation Collection/ Museum and others.
Artists
KEN OHARA
Gallery La Patinoire Royale Bach presented the solo exhibition ONE along with the exhibition Autoportraits au quotidien with Ohara’s work in dialogue with Melissa Shook in 2023 and exhibited the work of both artists at Paris Photo that year.
Exhibitions
ONE
KEN OHARA 6 October - 22 December 2023
ONE (1970) In 1970, while working as an assistant to Hiro and Richard Avedon, Ken Ohara emerged as a young artist with his seminal ONE series. ONE features close-up faces...
Exhibitions
AUTOPORTRAITS AU QUOTIDIEN
KEN OHARA & MELISSA SHOOK 6 October - 22 December 2023
Bringing together for the first time two major series by American artists Melissa Shook and Ken Ohara, both produced in 1972-1973, Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach parallels two singular approaches...
Events
PARIS PHOTO
ART FAIR 9 - 12 November 2023
For the occasion of the Paris Photo 2023 art fair, Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach, in collaboration with Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery New-York, will present the work of two artists: Ken...