Opening on September 15, the new exhibition entitled More than ONE — Ken Ohara's Photographic Journey 1972-2012 features approximately 30 works by California-based photographer Ken Ohara. This exhibition is organized in conjunction with this season’s wide exposure of Ohara’s lifework at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brussel’s Patinoire Royale | Galerie Valérie Bach, and the Paris Photo fair.
Ken Ohara (b. 1942) is known as an innovator in the genre of photographic portraiture by transforming our standard perceptions of others, ourselves, and what photography might be best suited to accomplish. In 1970, while working as an assistant to Hiro and Richard Avedon, he emerged as a young artist with his seminal ONE series. ONE features close-up faces of more than 500 New Yorkers, suggesting an essentially thin boundary across all human races and genders. The same year he produced a yearlong photographic diary in an intimate miniature album. These remarkable early accomplishments marked the beginnings of Ohara’s photographic journey for the next 50 years or so, a journey upon which this exhibition strives to shed new light.
