An Exploration Of Self And Solitude In Japan

Israeli photographer Gili Benita traveled through Japan for two months, it was a trip fuelled by the desire to experience solitude, and to understand its inherent difference from loneliness. The resulting series is ‘Kodoku’.

Using those who passed him as the embodiment of his loneliness, Benita’s series looks at those moments of solitude in the midst of cities. In ‘Kodoku’ he has captured an abstracted version of Japan. Figures become anonymous, as they are rendered through their watery reflection or at considerable distance. “The characters I chose to photograph were for me, a mirror for myself,” Benita explains. “They helped me to figure out the… line between solitude and loneliness.” Through projecting his emotions of loneliness onto these unknown characters, Benita said he found “a sense of identification” which inspired him “to express the sense of feeling alone.” Through this series, a culmination of his experience in Japan, he seems to express loneliness and an understanding of solitude: “In the loneliest place, I did not feel alone anymore”.