Juan Carlos Ortiz, SOULS OF JAPAN (Portrait 2020)

Souls of Japan - Portraits - represents the view through my lens of the souls that I encounter in my life here in Tokyo. It is part of a wider body of work that I am currently producing to illustrate through portraits, landscapes and street-life the different feelings that greet foreign residents in this amazing country: A complex mixture of wonder, surprise, alienation and more. In - Portraits - you will meet some of the different characters that I have encountered so far in Tokyo. The collection reflects the expected as well as the unexpected. Visible in the eyes of each subject is the fact that beneath this foreign and different surface, we are all the same with the same questions about life and the same inquietudes. This collection focusses on Japanese life at the gym. Whilst this particular fitness activity most readily calls to mind a western lifestyle, the emotions exposed in these portraits reveal the same pain, determination, fatigue and euphoria common to all of us.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.