"Spirituality has been the theme of my photography throughout my career. I feel the ability to sense this spirituality makes humans stand out from other beings. Temples, churches, and tombs, where people naturally bow and kneel, are all related to the death of people. Those places seem to contain or be surrounded by a “sacred air”. This “air” makes the place a different dimension, if photographed at the right time. It is interesting to realize that I have been interested in sacred places where they are associated to human death." - Kenro Izu
Kenro Izu was born in Osaka, Japan in 1949. During studying art at Nihon University in Tokyo, Izu visited to New York, and decided to reside there at age of 21.
After opening of Kenro Izu Studio in New York City in 1974, Izu started traveling and photographed world’s “Sacred Places” in 1979, and since then the project become his life-long work. For the projects, Izu uses 14×20 inch film camera to create Platinum Print which render the subtle nuance and capturing the spirituality of the sacred place until 2013. From2013 to 2016, A documentary project “Eternal Light” of the people who live and die in the fringe of India society by using a medium format film camera. From 2015 to 2017, a project of “Pompeii Requiem” to portray the city and people vanished nearly 2000 years ago by volcanic eruption at Pompeii, Italy. From 2017 to 2019, a project, “Fuzhou-A forgotten land” in China was completed. “Noh” project, was the first photographic project in Japan, to capture deep emotion which has been absorbed over 600 year old Noh mask