The idea that one would be able to produce a portrait of a whole country by assembling an assortment of portraits of some of its denizens is ludicrous. But in the world of photography this unfortunate idea has become a staple of its discourse through the work of August Sander who created his much celebrated People of the Twentieth Century, a portrait of the German people (whoever or whatever that might actually be — it’s still, or maybe I should say more than ever — widely contested in the country).
“It is possible,” Sander is being quoted, “to record the historical physiognomic image of a whole generation and—with enough knowledge of physiognomy—to make that image speak in photographs.” This idea should scare the bejesus out of anyone who has even remote knowledge of anthroposcopy and its applications. I suppose this is why the writer of the article I quoted from felt compelled to add a footnote: “Physiognomy was also disturbingly utilized by the Nazis for racial profiling and for justifying Aryan superiority.” You don’t say!
The sad aspects about this are that first, as a human being, Sander was a committed democrat who, alas, took some of his ideas from the 19th Century he had been born into, and that second, Sander’s life work is artistically so strong and fruitful that it can yield enormous power even without the conceptual framework the photographer put it into.
Beyond that, though, even if you were to photograph each and every inhabitant of some country, you would still not have a portrait of it. Instead, you would have a collection of photographs of these people — the trees, but not the forest.
Fortunately, taking portraits of every person in a country is mostly impossible, given the numbers involved. This should give us pause when considering what we’re actually looking at when approaching a collection of portraits originating from some locale. Through (mostly) the artistic choices and (secondly) those portrayed themselves, we are made to face someone’s vision of what their (or some other) country might be.
Beyond that, especially if the photographs were taken over a longer period of time, we get to experience one of the most important aspects of the photographer, the very core of their artistic belief. In Sander’s case, we are made to face someone who despite the brutalities of the era he was born into (the convoluted and violent emergence and convulsions of a united Germany) managed to see people as human beings and who felt a deep connection with them, even as many of those in front of his camera probably did not feel the same (certainly not the Nazis who would imprison and ultimately kill one of his sons).
In part, Sander’s work is so intriguing because in it, two world collide: the world of the 19th Century into which he had been born and in which he started out as a traditional studio portraitist, and the world of the early 20th Century in Germany with its aforementioned convulsions. In effect, Sander looked at the early 20th Century with the eyes of someone from the 19th Century, visually capturing a world that in daily life refused to be captured.
With all that said, Takashi Homma’s Portrait of J obviously isn’t a portrait of Japan, even as the publisher insists that the photographer “invites us to contemplate the everyday and extraordinary faces that form the social and cultural fabric of contemporary Japan”. To begin with, if it were that, the book would be a lot less interesting than it actually is: what exactly would one gain from the exercise? In what fashion would “the social and cultural fabric of contemporary Japan” emerge in one’s mind?
Isn’t the idea of art exactly the opposite, namely to focus excessively and with sheer self-absorbed dedication on the particular — and the particular alone — to evoke some larger and vague ideas in a viewer’s head?
I personally am so interested in Japan that I have been subjecting myself to the mostly wretched exercise of attempting to learn its language, an effort made torturous through the sheer randomness and idiosyncrasies of its writing system (which is so random that even Japanese people often do not know how to read certain characters). Ever since I first visited, I have been deeply fascinated by a country that makes it so incredibly hard to be approached, let alone understood by outsiders.
So no, maybe this is part of where the above is coming from, but if someone offers me the opportunity to “contemplate the everyday and extraordinary faces that form the social and cultural fabric of contemporary Japan” I’d rather be booking a flight to see for myself.
What, instead, I am interested in and what fascinates me about this book is not the (supposed) fact that I’m seeing Japan; it is that I am seeing the cultural world this particular photographer is enmeshed in.
Contrary to the claims made about the book, the people therein originate from a very small section of Japan. For a lack of a better description, it’s mostly (but not exclusively) creative people who operate along similar lines as Homma himself.
This includes many photographers (including but not limited to Yurie Nagashima, Daido Moriyama, or Takuma Nakahira), writers (such as Haruki Murakami), designers, fashion stylists or designers, architects, models, and actors. To say that the book portrays Japan’s creative class would be as precise as saying it portrays the country as a whole — but you are a lot closer.
There is a coolness going through the book, a being-cool-ness — exemplified by these people who know of their creative powers but who also know that in effect, they’re outsiders more than archetypes of their country. Again, what would be an archetype of a country? But with, for example, the people typically described by the term salaryman being absent, there is a statement being made here.
Even as they define them in a different fashion, the Japanese appreciate the margins of their society as much as Germans do or people living in the US: mostly not very much, the cultural margins being somewhat excepted (given the associated international prestige derived from them).
Cultural margins are driven by a combination of selfish creativity and a refusal to conform, something that in the West is mostly acceptable. In Japan, however, this plays out very differently.
Given their associated cultural capital, the people in these photographs are the few nails that do not get hammered down (to bring up the Japanese expression 出る釘は打たれる [deru kugi wa utareru] — “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”), the few nails that, however begrudgingly, are allowed to do what they need to do.
It would be impossible to imagine a Japan in which those portrayed in Portrait of J would exemplify the country. That would not be Japan any longer.
For better or worse (you choose), the Japan excluded from this book is the one that makes the one shown here possible. You can’t have one without the other; but you always want to remember that they’re the two sides of the same coin.
Recommended.
Portrait of J; Photographs by Takashi Homma; 232 pages; Dashwood Books/Session Press; 2025
If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. There, you will find exclusive articles, videos, and audio guides about the world of the photobook and more. For those curious, there now is the possibility of a trial membership for seven days.
Much like journalism, photography criticism involves a huge investment of time and resources. When you become a subscriber, you not only get access to more of my work. You will also help me produce it (including the free content on this site).
There also is a Mailing List, which I use to send out supplementary materials — anything that has me inspired or that somehow seemed worth noting. Some of it is serious, some is not. You can sign up for free here.
Thank you for your support!