Keizo Kitajima "Portraits" （Rat Hole Gallery）

Keizo Kitajima "Portraits"

Finished

Artists

Keizo Kitajima

Rat Hole Gallery is pleased to announce Portraits, a solo exhibition by Keizo Kitajima. In the ongoing series Portraits, which he has been working on for seventeen years since 1992, Kitajima has continued to photograph the same models, albeit randomly, approximately once a year. So far, he has photographed more than three hundred people and the total number of photographs amounts to over two thousand. This exhibition will present fourteen photographs of three different groups selected from the series.

In Portraits, male and female models wearing white shirts are photographed from the front against a white background. Kitajima then continues to photograph the same models about once a year. Although Kitajima began the series within a clear conceptual framework, the viewer receives various impressions from the photographs; that is, from the surfaces of the photographs he or she sees the depiction of such details as human skin, hair, or the texture of a shirt. Through these details, the viewer perceives grotesqueness, cruelty, or even the photographer's affection toward his models. In other words, his photographs allow the viewer to think about what it means to point a camera at someone and to take photographs of him or her, as well as revealing the violence and love that are involved in such an act. In short, his photographs invite us to think about the nature of photography itself.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Rat Hole Gallery will publish The Joy of Portraits, a photo book by Keizo Kitajima. Composed of two volumes (872 pages in total), this book covers almost his entire career up until the present. The gallery is pleased to offer audiences this long-awaited opportunity to get an overview of Kitajima’s practice.