Charles Fréger (Bourges, 1975, lives and works in Rouen) has defined his own genre of documentary portraits in which past and present come together. He focuses on groups in society whose clothing determines their identity. Think of athletes, soldiers and students, but also members of the Beijing opera, for example.
In 2013, Charles Fréger started a photography project exploring the masked ritual figures of Japan. Photographing sumo wrestlers had already familiarized him with metropolitan Japan, but he knew nothing about the countryside.
That is the subject of Yokainoshima. Using masked people, he paints the face and traditions of the Japanese countryside. In doing so, he shows the empathetic relationship that the Japanese have with their environment and their connection with nature.
Yokai, oni, tengu and kappa, which can be translated as ghosts, monsters, ogres and gnomes, are man-made figures that are used during festivals and rituals to exorcise the elements and find meaning in natural events.
Charles Fréger works like an August Sander: neutral and objective. Outdoors, on location, he treats his models as if they were street photography. Poses arise from a dialogue between him and the model. In this way he explores the portrait as a genre. A mixture of photographic and ethnographic research.