You Are Beautiful

Since its birth, photography has been considered to be the magical medium which captures the truth. But everyone knows now that is only the past myth.

Historically, we have been pushing ourselves forward to realize our wish to be more beautiful, by make-up, shape-up, tattoo and cosmetic surgery.

In this age with the advanced digital technology, it looks as though we are still devoting ourselves to pursue the ideal beauty in the virtual image by using digital modification.

Is the truth so not worth looking at?

A thought occurred to me to photograph a human body by high-definition digital back and enlarge the image as large as possible without retouching.

I felt as though I was trying to find the smallest creature hiding in the vast field.

Moreover, by looking at people around me in such a point of view, they started to look so attractive, regardless of their age or gender.

I would like to pay my respects to my models, for understanding the nature of my experiment, which seems to counteract the trend and I would like to compliment on their being.

You are beautiful.

Izima Kaoru

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We are pleased to announce the introduction of Izima Kaoru's new series "You Are Beautiful" at AI KOWADA GALLERY.

Highly recognized as a commercial photographer in Japan, Izima started to produce personal photographic artwork since 1980s. He became widely known with "Landscapes with a Corpse" series and the series has been exhibited in a numerous exhibitions in the countries such as Germany, the UK, Italy and the USA since the early 90s. Also in Japan, one of the images from the series was used as a main visual of "Carpe Diem -seize the day-" held at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, the group exhibition recorded 20,000 visitors in March 2012.

"You Are Beautiful" will be the first in 3 years since his last solo show in NY. He will be introducing the new series, which was created out of his unique point of view, to question the true beauty of human body.

With this series, Izima used a high-resolution digital camera to capture the human body as they are, to present the most honest image of it.

Showing intimate scars on the skin of the models, capturing every single pore, it will be the first experience for the viewers to confront the figure without a disguise.

This exhibition also presents the simplest answer to the pure curiosity of a childhood about human body. However, the almost frightening reality that an "honest" human body carries will surely arouse yet another question in each of us, asking timidly "are we really beautiful?"Izima ingeniously created a structure by choosing the model who has everything in common with us, that the subject matter whom we started to question of her beauty is not the model, but ourselves, mirrored by her.

Please do not miss this opportunity to witness the new world expressed by Izima Kaoru.

Cooperation:

Contemporary Photography Research Preparatory