During the 1980s, Kenro Izu began making photographs of difficult-to-reach places. Invariably, for want of a better description, these were places that were possessed of "spirituality." Izu made "documents" of places of worship as diverse as Easter Island, Teotihuacan, Angkor Wat, Stonehenge, the monuments of the Chinese Silk Road, Palmyra, Mustang, Hampi, the caves of Ajanta, Borobudur, Pagan, and Lhasa. The work was painstakingly slow. Since creating those first images in the 1980s, Izu has continued his travels, making numerous journeys to these out-of-the-way places. Sacred Places, which follows the success of Still Life, Izu's first book with Arena Editions, represents the first major compilation of these magnificent travel images-images that truly defy simple description. His is a vision that has literally been hacked and honed until the photographs are totally minimalist documents, to which nothing can be added and from which absolutely nothing can be subtracted. It is a vision totally outside of the ordinary photographic parameters of our time.
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