meteor city on route 66 by paul muller photo ikko narahara
Ikkō Narahara(奈良原 一高,Narahara Ikkō, born November 3, 1931) is a Japanese photographer. Born in Fukuoka, Narahara studied law at Chuo University (graduating in 1954) and, influenced by statues of Buddha at Nara, art history at the graduate school of Waseda University, from which he received an MA in 1959.
He had his first solo exhibition, Ningen no tochi (Human land), at the Matsushima Gallery (Ginza) in 1956. In this Narahara showed Kurokamimura, a village on Sakurajima. The exhibition brought instant renown. In his second exhibition, "Domains", at the Fuji Photo Salon in 1958, he showed a Trappist monastery in Tobetsu (Hokkaidō), and a women's prison in Wakayama.
In the meantime, Narahara had shown his works in the first (1957) of three exhibitions titled The Eyes of Ten; exhibited in all three, and went on to co-found the short-lived Vivo collective. In 1962-5 he stayed in Paris, and after a time in Tokyo, from 1970-74 in New York. During this time he took part in a class by the American photographer Diane Arbus. He recorded Arbus' speech during these classes. These recordings would become an interesting document of the artist's statements about her own work shortly before she committed suicide. Narahara's work often depicts isolated communities and extreme conditions. He makes much use of wide-angle lenses, even hemispherical-coverage ("circular") fisheye lenses.
In 1967 Narahara won the Photographer of the Year Award from the Japan Photo Critics Association. He has won numerous other prizes. From 1999 to 2005, Narahara was a professor at the Graduate School of Kyushu Sangyo University (Fukuoka).
Booklength collections
Yōroppa: seishi shita jikan (ヨーロッパ・静止した時間, Where time has stopped). Kajima, 1967.
Supēn: Idai naru gogo (スペーン・偉大なる午後) España: Grand tarde, Fiesta, Vaya con Dios. Tokyo: Kyūryūdō, 1969.
Venetsia no yoru (ヴェネツィアの夜) / Venice: Nightscapes. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1985. ISBN 4-00-008027-X. Most of the text is in Japanese only, but the captions and an essay by Narahara are in English as well as Japanese.
Shōzō no fūkei (肖像の風景). Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1985. ISBN 4-10-357501-8.
Ningen no tochi (人間の土地), Human land. Tokyo: Libroport, 1987.
Hoshi no kioku (星の記憶, The memory of stars). Tokyo: Parco, 1987.
Venetsia no hikari (ヴェネツィアの光) / Venetian Light. Tokyo: Ryūkō Tsūshin, 1985. ISBN 4-947551-93-3.
Burōdowei (ブロードウェイ) / Broadway. Tokyo: Creo, 1991. ISBN 4-906371-05-1.
Dyushan dai-garasu to Takiguchi Shūzō shigā bokkusu (デュシャン大ガラスと瀧口修造シガー・ボックス) / Marcel Duchamp large glass with Shuzo Takiguchi cigar box. Tokyo: Misuzu, 1992. ISBN 4-622-04242-8.
Kū (空) / Emptiness. Tokyo: Libroport, 1994. ISBN 4-8457-0898-1.
Takemitsu, Tōru and Giovanni Chiaramonte. Ikko Narahara: Japanesque. Milan: Motta, 1994. ISBN 88-7179-087-1. In Italian
Revised and augmented edition: Tokyo: Creo, 1995. ISBN 4-906371-20-5
Tokyo, the '50s. Tokyo: Mole, 1996. ISBN 4-938628-21-X.
(Japanese)Nihon nūdo meisakushū (日本ヌード名作集, Japanese nudes). Camera Mainichi bessatsu. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1982. Pp. 194–99 show nudes by Narahara.
Nihon shashin no tenkan: 1960 nendai no hyōgen (日本写真の転換：1960時代の表現) / Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s. Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1991. Exhibition catalogue, text in Japanese and English. Pp. 18–29 show a selection of Narahara's earlier work. (That on p. 23 is upside down, as pointed out in an erratum slip.)
