Kenro Izu : “Looking East” Master Exhibition
Lucca Photo Festival, Lucca, Italy
Nov. 19th 2011 ~ Dec. 11th, 2011 

The 3rd Lucca Photo Festival (LPF), with the theme of “Looking East”was held in a beautiful walled medieval city of Lucca in Tuscany of Italy. A dozen of venues was selected and exhibited, or events were held during the month long festival.

Izu, received an award and selected as a Master Exhibition, and his 50 pieces of Platinum/ Palladium Print and large Pigment print were exhibited in 3 majestic rooms, decorated with ornate Fresco painting in the Palazzo (former Palace).

After I finished photography of a monk, I went into the sanctuary to pray thanks to the ruler of the place, and found a curious object placed before the altar.

I was told it was a ritual object to send a deceased spirit away, on the seventh day of the death.

A man and a young boy sat there and prayed. The baby, though he may not aware of the ritual, but seems understands he is in the solemn place, and his mother had left forever.

He was looking into the altar, may be into the space beyond the alter, as if he sees something which we would not. I realized the family was the part of sacred air of the Cheri Gompa.

Kenro Izu : “The inner world seen in photography”
Koumi machi – Kougen Museum, Nagano, Japan
Sept. 17th, 2011 ~ Nov. 13th, 2011 

The very first photography exhibition, in the museum, where its primary interests is in the design form.
3 Japanese photographers were selected in the exhibition titled “The inner world seen in photography”, in the contemporary architecture by an architect, Tadao Ando.

In the mail room of a curved wall, Izu’s 20 pieces from the series of “Sacred Places of Asia” was exhibited. The work includes, from 1993 through the most recent work in India in 2009. The exhibition was associated with Kiyosato Photographic Art Museum (K•MoPA), where collected more than 250 pieces of Izu’s photographs. Majority of the exhibited pieces were loaned from K•MoPA

Kenro Izu : “INDIA sacred within”
Galerie Persiehl & Heine, Hamburg, Germany
Nov. 17th, 2010 ~ Jan. 12th, 2011 

Galerie Commiter, a long time well known art gallery in Hamburg, opened a photography gallery, and since 2008, Izu has been represented at the Galerie Presihel & Heine.

In its spacious 3 sectioned gallery, 36 pieces include several large (36×48 inch) Pigment prints from Izu`s on-going work of “INDIA sacred within” was exhibited. In the very inside gallery, a flat screen monitor was installed to show a video, produced by a Japanese museum, document of his pilgrimage trips to remote section of India, and a rare occasion of Izu’s photography session of His Holiness Dalai Lama the 14th, in his palace of Dharamsara, India.

Kenro Izu : BHUTAN sacred within
Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art (K’MoPA), Yamanashi, Japan.
June 28, 2008 – January 25, 2009 

71 photographs of Platinum/Palladium print and 4 photographs of large Carbon pigment print, the entire image collection from the book “BHUTAN sacred within” was exhibited at K’MoPA in Japan, in a beautiful and spacious environment of Kiyosato. Photographs were exhibited with an introduction of traditional Bhutanese costume and ceremonial mask for additional interests to the audience. During the exhibition, K’MoPA organized a photo talk of Kenro with Tsuyoshi Saeki, the editor-in-chief of “Kaze no tabibito” a fine photography magazine, in September 2008.

A workshop of Platinum Print was also conducted in November 2008.

Kenro Izu ; Sacred Places
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, USA
July 9, 2008 – October 12, 2008 

Kenro Izu: Sacred Places features over 50 black-and-white photographs of spiritual landmarks located in Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, and Europe. Renowned for his stunningly beautiful photographs of the ancient temples in Angkor, Cambodia, Japanese-born artist Kenro Izu has traveled extensively since 1979, capturing images of religious sites and monuments across the world. A number of these sites have never been photographed before, while others are endangered from neglect, environmental challenges, or overexposure to human contact. Much more than merely documentary in nature, Izu’s photographs convey the spiritual essence of these sites that have resonated over millennia with peoples of many faiths.

Coincides with the exhibition, Kenro Izu gave a lecture at DIA, on his journey of years of experiences which touched his heart. 

Kenro Izu : “BLUE”
Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, NY
Oct. 17th, 2004 ~ Nov. 23rd, 2004 

A body of work photographed between 2001 and 2004, inspired by the essay “In praise of shadow” released in 1933, by Japanese novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki.
Izu collaborated with a Butoh dancer from Japan, and invited her for several sessions of photography in his studio in NYC, with his 14×20 inch camera.

Izu contact printed in Cyanotype with his 14×20 inch negative, a traditional printing technique, over a base of Platinum print, which also is a traditional printing technique. Having up to 5 layers of Platinum and Cyanotype on a single sheet of water color paper, Izu achieved the images of deep blue female body, as if she dissolves into the shadow.

In the exhibition “BLUE” at Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC, Izu created an environment by installing 2 of his hand-made 6 ft tall cylinder light, in the center of gallery and dimed all the gallery spot lights.

Among the collection of 38 pieces, Izu and the gallery selected 20 pieces of “BLUE”, mounted on Black anodized aluminum plate, then mounted in the frame of the Japanese Black Lacquer.

A book of “BLUE” is also published to coincide the exhibitions, by Howard Greenberg Gallery, associated with Carla Sozzani Gallery of Milan, Italy, Camera Work Gallery of Hamburg, Germany, and Shimose Fine Art, of Tokyo, Japan.

Kenro Izu : The Sacred Within
Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY
November 2, 2007 – February 18, 2008

After years of pilgrimage to sacred landscapes and spiritual monuments, the photographer Kenro Izu has turned his masterful lens to individuals of faith. Bhutan, the Sacred Within is his final work in a trilogy on this theme, and the second to be premiered at the Rubin Museum of Art. Izu takes the people of Bhutan and their particular blending of an indigenous religion and Buddhist thought as his subject. The meticulously crafted portraits he has made express the purity of those beliefs and their resonance in the larger world of today.

Kenro Izu : Sacred Places
Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, MA USA
September 14, 2002 – March 17, 2003

Kenro Izu: Sacred Places showcases a magnificent ensemble of more than 60 of Izu’s photographs of spiritual landmarks in Asia, the Pacific Islands, Egypt, and Europe, many of which have never before been exhibited. Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue published by Arena Editions, the first major book on Izu’s photographs of the world’s holy sites.

Clark Worswick, curator of photography for the Peabody Essex Museum, has long been a supporter and advocate of Izu’s art. He says the Japanese-born photographer works in the tradition of both the great 19th century landscape photographers and early 20th century pictorialists. As such, his work is right at home at the Peabody Essex, which holds the largest collection of 19th century photographs of Asia.

“With Izu you have a photographer who is working against the grain in contemporary photography in a classical form. I think he is one of the greatest photographers working in the world today,” says Worswick. 

Among Izu’s most renowned images are those of the ancient Angkor temples in Cambodia. The photographs capture the stunningly beautiful Khmer architectural monuments and the natural landscape surrounding—and in some case destroying—them. These select photographs were first shown to the public in 1998 in a special exhibition at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Kenro Izu: Light over Ancient Angkor. Izu’s photography of Angkor also brought him close to the suffering of Cambodian children whose limbs had been shattered by land mines. He helped establish a free-care hospital for those children, and has supported it with proceeds from the sale of his photographs through an organization he set up called Friends without a Border. 

Kenro Izu was born in Osaka in 1949 and attended the Nihon University College of Art before moving to New York City in the early 1970s. After discovering Francis Frith’s mammoth plate photographs of Egypt, he traveled there in 1979 to photograph the pyramids and other ancient monuments, and the Egyptian landscape. He later photographed holy sites in Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, and Easter Island. A practicing Buddhist, Izu has most recently focused his energies on Buddhist and Hindu sites in India, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Besides those of Angkor, Kenro Izu: Sacred Places will include sumptuous photographs of hallowed monuments in Borobodur, Indonesia; Agra and Varanasi in India; and Mandalay, Burma. 

Many of these sites face destruction, either through neglect or overexposure to human contact. The importance of documenting the beauty of such sites was reinforced recently with the destruction of ancient Buddhist sculptures in Afghanistan. But Izu’s photography is not a staid documentation of endangered architecture. “The important thing is the spirituality of these monuments,” he once told an interviewer. “It’s not just a photograph of a building. The building has to be there to photograph but the atmosphere is what I’m interested in. The building is a representation of that spiritual side.”

Izu succeeds in capturing that spiritual essence of the places he photographs through his exacting approach to his craft, says Worswick. The camera he uses is enormous, producing 14 x 20 inch negatives. Izu meticulously pores over every image and takes out visual elements he believes are unnecessary. During a three-day period Izu prints his negatives into positive images on fine watercolor paper hand-coated with a platinum emulsion. The resulting palladium/platinum prints “are among the most finely crafted prints ever made in the history of the photographic medium,” adds Worswick.