By Conor Risch

In his young career, Kosuke Okahara has made photographs of lepers in China and Nepal, rebel soldiers in Burma, immigrants traveling from Colombia to the United States, and suicide-prone self-injurers in his native Japan.

Okahara was studying for a degree in education when a friend working for the UN in post-war Kosovo invited him to visit. The experience, which he called "shocking," inspired him to buy a camera and set out for Africa. He later traveled to Colombia after reading a memoir by politician Ingrid Betancourt. While there he befriended a local television reporter who, Okahara says, showed him how to deal with people and operate as a journalist. Okahara went on to photograph Colombians at the lower reaches of the drug trade, and also a hitman who worked for right wing paramilitaries.

For Okahara, who joined Agence VU in February 2007, making a successful photograph means capturing the essence of how someone lives. "I want the audience to feel the existence of people, otherwise the photos become just information." Okahara tries to understand the humanity of his subjects and share it with viewers. He is interested in ibasyo, a Japanese term that he translates as "the physical and emotional place where a person can exist," a location or state of mind where a person can be comfortable and at peace. Okahara used the term as the title of his study of young Japanese women who cut themselves. He explains that the taboo act of self-mutilation and the depression these women experience as a result of childhood traumas deny them a sense of ibasyo. "They cannot develop their self-esteem," Okahara says, "there is no place where they can exist."

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