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The last chapter of Hiroh Kikai’s famous portrait series.

For more than 40 years, Japanese photographer Hiroh Kikai has taken the portraits of passersby near the Sensoji temple in Tokyo’s Asakusa district. Titled “Persona”, his portraits are a masterclass in character study. In front of the same, simple backdrop, the people Kikai selects for his portraits reveal through subtle hints – their pose, their gaze, their belongings – the wealth of their personalities. Kikai accompanies each of his photographs with a small caption, drawing attention to a particular detail or providing us with an interesting tidbit about the person we see.
This massive volume, subtitled “The Final Chapter” in Japanese, encompasses photographs taken between 2005 and 2018. An afterword by Hiroh Kikai and an essay by Horie Toshiyuki (in Japanese and English translation) as well as biographical information and a list of publications and exhibitions concludes the book.