“Assembly Teshikaga” is the latest installment in Japanese photographer Osamu Yokonami’s ongoing series. Originally started in 2010, “Assembly” explores the nature of collective identities through a unique approach—groups of girls dressed in the same clothes, captured in rich and expansive natural landscapes, their faces almost never shown.
For “Assembly Teshikaga,” Yokonami visited the forests, lakes and snow-covered fields of Teshikaga in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. In gentle distinctive images, “Assembly Teshikaga” contrasts the seeming lightheartedness of the girls with the sublime, raw power of nature while conveying both the anonymity of the individual and the presence of the collective.

“I believe that the fragility and transience that coexist in these scenes, and the figures of the girls advancing through the snow, have something in common with the way they are trying their best to face the difficulties of life in the social upheaval expected to occur in the future.”
― from Osamu Yokonami’s afterword (included in Japanese & English)