For millenia, outward appearance has often been a choice of how one wants to be perceived.
For the past dozen or so years, it’s been double-duty for those increasing number of people who’ve chosen a virtual presence. Noriyuki Tanaka‘s deceptively simple 100 Erikas explores the connection between personality and appearance from the outside looking in where emotions and perceptions are built upon not only facial features, but the ideas of the other that resides in physical self-transformation, body manipulation, and social hierarchy. The artist could’ve taken this idea to extreme levels – having 100 pedestals with a push button nearby that could tap into a random sampling of hundred different voices matching the transformed features that we see in the photos – but these photos are there to engage us in a dialogue with ourselves about our prejudice or our impartiality to what we see expressed on their surface. An added element is the use of the 20-year-old Japanese media star Erika Sawajiri as the model – creating a much different mindset amongst Japanese viewers than would be created, say, in Austria where the photo below (of 50 Erikas) was taken.
