Hiroh Kikai
Persona
May 14 – July 2, 2009
Japanese photographer Hiroh Kikai is best known for his Asakusa Portraits series, in which he documents individuals encountered in the Asakusa district in Tokyo, historically known as a center for popular entertainment. Begun over forty years ago in 1973 and taken with a handheld, square format Hasselblad, Kikai’s black and white street portraits powerfully depict the individual essence of each of his subjects. A parallel body of work, Tokyo Labyrinth, explores the landscape of the city without the presence of its inhabitants. Using the same camera, and created during a similar period of time, Kikai sees these series as being inextricably bound together.
For the Asakusa Portraits, Kikai poses his subjects against the plain exterior wall of the Sensoji Temple, so that their unique personalities are the focus of the photograph as opposed to the surrounding environment. His aim is to strip each character down to their essential attributes. In Tokyo Labyrinth Kikai creates rigorous compositions of the streets of the city, finding beauty in the most commonplace streets and alleys. As with the portraits, he adopts certain self-imposed limitations, often reducing these scenes to a series of lines and planes. Underpinning Kikai’s extended exploration of the distinct character of Tokyo and its inhabitants is the age old question of what it means to be human.
Hiroh Kikai was born in 1945 in Yamagata, Japan. His work has been included in exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York; Neue National Galerie, Berlin; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona. His work can be found in numerous public collections including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and International Center of Photography. Kikai’s work is the subject of eleven books, including the major monograph, Hiroh Kikai: Asakusa Portraits, published by Steidl in 2008.
Hiroh Kikai's major solo show is traveling from the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography to Yamagata Museum of Art, opening in December. The exhibition features 180 of Kikai's photographs from the past 40 years, the majority of which are from the artist's acclaimed series Asakusa Portraits.
Hiroh Kikai's work A performer of butoh dance, from the Persona/Asakusa Portrait series, has been acquired by the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Amherst, MA.
The artist's work is in the collection of the Houston Museum of Fine Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, among others.
Both Laura Letinsky and Hiroh Kikai were nominated for the 2009 Deutsche Borse Prize, awarded to UK-born photographer Paul Graham. The Prize aims to reward a living photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the medium of photography in Europe over the past year. Gallery artist Esko Mannikko was the 2008 Deutsche Borse recipient.
