shashasha

Yamaguro Gasho's photographs capture the lives of the children who lived in the US housing developments in central tokyo then known as 'Washington heights'. Approached and responding to the lens of a camera, each image reflects the children always at play with the onlooker, constantly exploring the boudaries between the child and the adult world. The children in the images embody notions of race andinnocence and the reality of growing up within these historical and social narratives are reflected in the portraits of the young African American children. Masks and perfomance are futher explored with the images Gasho captured at an American military base. Here the portraits reflect the world of the child confronting that of the photographer and that of the adult. The fabrication of the personage by wearing a mask is wonderfully portrayed in Gasho's images, the masked child is freed from ideas of their symbolized innnocense and independent egos and personalities are able to be peformed.