The series of “BLUE” was created during a period of 2001 and 2004, inspired by the Picasso’s Blue periods and a Japanese novelist, Tanizaki ‘s essay of “In praise of shadow”.
To achieve the deepest blue, I printed 2~4 layers of Cyanotype over a Platinum print, on a watercolor paper.

“There is an old lyric that says “the brushwood we gather and tie it together, it makes a hut. Pull it apart, a field once again.” Such is a way of thinking in old Japan, one finds beauty not in the substance itself but in the weave of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.
A noctilucent jewel which exudes its glow and color in the dark, and loses its beauty in the light of day, were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”

from In Praise of Shadows (1933-34)
by Junichiro Tanizaki

Kenro Izu, 2004