Ikkō Narahara


Ikkō Narahara was a Japanese photographer. His work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Early life and education

Born in Fukuoka, Narahara studied law at Chuo University 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.

Career

He had his first solo exhibition, Ningen no tochi, at the Matsushima Gallery 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, and a women's prison in Wakayama.
In the meantime, Narahara had shown his works in the first of three exhibitions titled The Eyes of Ten; exhibited in all three, and went on to co-found the short-lived Vivo collective. From 1962 to 1965 he stayed in Paris, and after a time in Tokyo, from 1970 to 1974 in New York City. 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 depicted isolated communities and extreme conditions. He made much use of wide-angle lenses, even hemispherical-coverage fisheye lenses.
In 1967 Narahara won the Photographer of the Year Award from the Japan Photo Critics Association. He won numerous other prizes. From 1999 to 2005, Narahara was a professor at the Graduate School of Kyushu Sangyo University.

Works by Narahara

Booklength collections