shashasha

Ken Ohara’s photographic series of one-hour-exposure portraits create in their final form a new identity for each subject. The traditional evaluations we make of a portrait, i.e., “How do you look?” are lost in the blur of a passing hour. The soft outlines of heads and bodies take on a new power in their loss of detail, and we look to the objects that frame each sitter to give us a context for identity. Like Meatyard before him, Ohara’s collective subjects create a wry and melancholy portrait of the absent artist.