Pictures made by Shinichiro Uchikura, who works in a portrait studio, apart from the commemorative and ID photographs he takes there: people photographed in natural light in front of a black background, 500 to 1,000 consecutive shots in five to ten minutes, from which each picture is chosen. Before any instruction the sitter has already put their eyes on the camera, smiled or taken off a social mask; unabashed expressions and primitive, subtle movements of the body that the naked eye cannot confirm. Freed from social position and norms, they seem to stand on a stage. The complexity of identity and gender rises from each figure, a portrait of the individual and of our own mental state. In shooting and selecting, the photographer's I and the subject's I face and engage with each other, and each picture is the trace of that inner communication.