Issue:
READERS MAY RECOGNIZE THE HAND OF PHOTOGRAPHER BRUCE OSBORN behind our cover this month, shot in the style of his Oyako series.
Osborn shot his first Oyako (parent and child) photograph on a magazine assignment in 1982. He had no inkling then that it would be the start of a project that would find him photographing more than 4,500 families, or that it would still be going strong some 30 years later. The photos have graced innumerable publications and gallery walls (including Ginza’s Wako Gallery last June).
This month marks an extension of Osborn’s project; Oyako no hi or “Oyako Day.” In 2003, he and his wife Yoshiko, who manages the photo sessions, decided to take the parent-child idea one step further by creating this social action.
Says Osborn: “More than anything, we wanted to express our gratitude to all the families we had met through this project. Since the second Sunday of May is Mother’s Day and the third Sunday of June is Father’s Day, we felt the fourth Sunday of July would be fitting to celebrate Oyako Day. We hoped it would provide an opportunity for all of us to re-examine and reaffirm this bedrock relation that our lives are tied to.”
That year they invited 100 families to have their photos taken at one marathon shoot; the response was so overwhelming that they decided to celebrate Oyako Day each year since in the same way.
This year, Osborn will be holding the Oyako Day shoot on July 28 at a Tokyo studio. To learn more about Oyako Day, visit the website www.oyako.org.
Their team is also producing a film, entitled Oyako: Present to the Future, and is soliciting crowd funding through the motion gallery website. More information is available at motion-gallery.net/projects/oyako-movie.
Osborn, as FCCJ Exhibition Committee chair, has also been responsible for arranging the exhibitions in the Main Bar for the last three years.
