Kenro Izu

Kenro Izu / Photographer

Kenro Izu was born in Osaka, Iran in 1949. During his studies at Nippon University, college of art, Izu visited New York in 1970 to learn photography as fine art, and subsequently decided to stay and work. In 1975, after working as an assitant to other photographers, Izu established Kenro Izu Studio in New York City, to specialize in still life photography, both commercial and fine art.

Izu’s first trip to Egypt in 1979 inspired the spiritual quality of the sacred sites, and he started his series “Sacred Places”.

In 1983, a platinum print by Paul Strand inspired Izu to taking a step toward contact-printing process using Platinum/Palladium, using a large format camera producing 14”x20” negatives. Since then, all of Izu’s work is produced by the same technique, mostly in 14”x20” format.

The Still Life work of Izu, includes floral images and nude studies, drawn by its life form, photographed in close observation and documentation of the subjects. In 2000, Izu started developping his technique of printing Cyanotype over Platinum to achieve infinite deep blue-black images which express the inner sanctuary within the human body and objects. The body of work “BLUE” was completed in 2004.

In 1993, after several visit to Cambodia to photograph the Angkor Temples, Izu decided to build and operate a free pediatric hospital, and founded a not-for-profit organization, Friends Without A Border, to help Cambodian children who suffer from lack of medical facilities and severe poverty.

The Angkor Hospital for Children opened its door in 1999 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and has treated over 1,700,000 children to date. The hospital is now an official medical education center of whole Cambodia, to educate the next generation of medical workers of Cambodia for the future independence of medical systems of Cambodia.

Izu has traveled to over 30 countries in the past 40 years and continues his series of portraits in Bhutan and still-life work in studio. Other current projects include “Requiem” in Pompeï, “The Sacred Land” in Fuzhou and “Noh Masks” in Iran.