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Sacred
Places
During
the 1980s, Kenro Izu began focusing his lens on an intreaguing subject
— difficult-to-reach, spiritual places. Mr. Izu's photography
captures places of worship as diverse as Easter Island, Teotihuacán,
Stonehenge, the monuments of the Chinese Silk Road and the caves
of Ajanta in India.
His
book, Sacred Places, follows the success of Still Life,
his first book — and represents the first major compilation
of these stunning travel images.
The
strength of his work stems from the artist's careful scrutiny of
the genre of the great 19th-century "exotic" photographs
of Asia.
Such
work ranged from locales such as the banks of the Nile and Cairo
to the quayside of Yokohama. Like his 19th-century predecessors,
Mr. Izu utilizes large-format cameras — typically a massive
14-by-20-inch view camera.
But
Mr. Izu is also very much a 21st-century photographer. He borrows,
reshapes and recasts the styles of the 19th century and modernism
for his own unique imagery.
His
vision is at all times a subtle and multi-layered creation —
and it is comfortably outside of the ordinary photographic parameters
of our time.
About
Kenro Izu
Born
in 1949 in Osaka, Japan, Kenro Izu studied photography at Nihon
University, College of Art in Tokyo from 1969 to 1970.
He
then moved to New York where he began working with the complex platinum/palladium
process shortly after admiring a Paul Strand print at auction in
1981.
Today,
Mr. Izu is considered one of the finest practitioners of this early
photographic medium. His work is included in numerous major collections.
Among them are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — and
the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
Mr.
Izu is also the founder of Friends
Without A Border — a foundation which provides medical
care for children in Cambodia.
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