Multipurpose Room

Sacred Places of Asia: The Platinum Photographs of Kenro Izu

With more than fifty years of his career based in New York, a Japanese photographer, Kenro Izu has travelled extensively seeking out sacred spaces around the world and portraying the inner world of people. This exhibition "Sacred Places of Asia" showcases fifty photographs of sacred sites in various parts of Asia taken between 1993 and 2012. His works in the exhibition are platinum prints made by contact printing with 14 x 20 inch (35 x 50 cm) negatives taken with an ultra-large format camera that allows to capture the "intricate texture of sacred places" and the "dense air" that embraces them. The subtle nuances of tonality from black to white and an infinite range of grays of the platinum print make Izu's work stand out as conveying the spiritual essence of existence, different from documentary photography. He once wrote about his photography as "the locus of my search for my own path by means of the sacred place, where the transcendent takes concrete form."
These photographs of sites throughout Asia offer a window to the world of Kenro Izu that may resonate deeply within the viewers.