In September 1970, following the success of his debut project ONE, Ken Ohara was commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar to photograph for Geri Trotta’s popular column “Not to Be Missed.” The assignment took him to the 8th New York Film Festival, where he encountered leading figures of international cinema—from French New Wave directors such as Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut to Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci and British master David Lean. Applying the same tight cropping used in ONE, Ohara created intimate portraits of more than fifteen directors gathered at the event.

The photo hunt proved challenging, eased only through the kind assistance of actress Catherine Deneuve, whom he also captured unofficially. After receiving his advance payment, Ohara soon departed for Africa, later printing the series with solarized borders—a subtle homage to the visionary filmmakers he photographed. This album features fifteen portraits from that remarkable occasion.

"with" is Ken Ohara’s series of one-hour-exposure portraits of strangers, in which each subject assumes a new identity through the passage of time. The conventional judgments we bring to portraiture dissolve in the blur of a lingering hour. The indistinct outlines of a head or body gain an unexpected power through their loss of detail, while the surrounding environment offers subtle cues to individual presence. Taken together, Ohara’s collective subjects form a wry and melancholy self-portrait of the absent artist.