The Power of the Collective for Japanese schoolgirls

For his project Assembly, Osamu Yokonami created a series of photographs of secondary school girls in different natural environments, questioning the notion of individuality within a uniform group.

Born in Tokyo in 1976, Osamu Yokonami works as an artist and a fashion and advertising photographer.

A concept at the heart of Japanese society

As the Art Loft Asia gallery’s website explains, Assembly illustrates to a certain degree the idea expressed by Gilles Deleuze, claiming that ‘individuals have become “dividuals”, and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks”.’ In the photographs in the series Assembly, in their choreographed movements, young girls dressed in the same school uniform—illustrating the powerful role clothes play in the notion of collective identity—form a single entity. Surrounded by nature, they walk through fields, play in the forest or on the beach, in movements patterned by their environment. In the end, any sense of individuality disappears completely.

The artist’s tribute to the collective should be seen in light of the importance of this concept in Japanese culture. This theme is at the heart of Osamu Yokonami’s body of work; indeed, he gained attention with the series 1000 Children, also presenting schoolgirls in uniform, all the same age, holding fruit between their left shoulder and left ear.

Assembly (2010-2014), a series of photographs by Osamu Yokonami, can be viewed on his website.