Ken Ohara’s One, published in 1970, presents a radical exploration of identity and human universality through a series of extreme close-up portraits of New Yorkers. Created while Ohara was in his late twenties and working as an assistant to Hiro and Richard Avedon, the series reflects a deep engagement with the visual language of portraiture while challenging conventional notions of individual recognition. The project's visual approach systematically removes distinguishing features such as hair, clothing, and even racial characteristics by unifying the tonal range of the prints, directing the viewer’s focus solely on the facial features—eyes, nose, and mouth—in a way that both emphasizes difference and underscores commonality.
Inspired by his experiences in New York City and informed by his work with Avedon, whose portraits were renowned for their directness, Ohara adopts an unwavering frontal composition, cropping his subjects from forehead to chin to strip away context and encourage an introspective gaze. His rigorously standardized photographic technique employs tight close-ups, ensuring each portrait maintains an identical format. The influence of conceptual art manifests in the project’s serial nature, its deadpan execution, and the uniformity of its presentation, aligning it with movements prioritizing concept over aesthetics. The book itself, resembling a Manhattan telephone directory, reinforces its archival and systematic approach to documenting human faces. The choice to work in black and white further abstracts the images, reducing visual distractions and reinforcing the notion of a shared human essence.
Although its U.S. reception was initially modest, One quickly found key champions—most notably John Szarkowski—leading to inclusion in MoMA’s New Japanese Photography (1974). Ohara received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1974–75), and the series has since circulated widely in museum contexts, from touring retrospectives at Museum Folkwang and the Münchner Stadtmuseum to recent gallery surveys. Works from One now reside in major collections, including a complete set at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as holdings at MoMA, the Met, SFMOMA, and LACMA.
