In 1973 Hiroh Kikai, who had recently graduated from Hosei Univeristy with a degree in philosophy, began to make impromptu portraits of the people he encountered in the busy Asakusa district in northeast Tokyo. He has continued the project until the present. Working with a handheld Hasselblad camera and black-and-white film, he photographs his subjects in even, natural light as they stand in a pose of their own choosing before the plain vermilion walls of the celebrated Sensoji temple.

Kikai says that he rarely spends more than 10 minutes with any of his subjects. But in that time he manages to carry out an intense study of their attire, physiognomy, body language, and expression. With surprising frequency, he is able to capture in a few exposures an image that does more than suggest the outlines of his sitter's personality. With a radical economy of photographic means, Kikai seems to isolate and lay bare his subject's essential character. He says that his aim is to create portraits that set in motion what he calls a "two-way conversation between the viewer and the picture."

Asakusa Portraits

Exhibition Catalogue