Ikko Narahara "HEAVEN" 8 May, 2003 [Thu] - 30 May, 2003 [Fri]

Ikko Narahara's images from his latest photo book "HEAVEN " are on display this month.

The work consists of three parts, and the third part of this show under the title of "Double Vision" also decorated the final section of his first retrospective exhibition held at Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris from December 12, 2002 through March 9, 2003.

He conceived the idea of HEAVEN when he visited Parc de Sceaux. The park is the place where Eugene Atget took a series of photographs a year before he died. Ikko cherished his work and made a trip to the park when he reached the same age of Atget working on the series.

Some time after this trip, he was sent to hospital and, while he was under medical treatment, he had a unique experience of double visions. Based on this intricate visual sensation, he crystallized his idea of creating his heaven by overlapping visions separately conceived by both eyes.

The first part "Seven Heavens - Roma"(1998) is the world of the ocellus looking into the heaven through a narrow view. The field of vision then evolves to multiple in the second part "Vertical Horizon - Tokyo"(1991-1995) and finally at the third section "Double Vision - Paris" (2000-2002) the world converges into the human body through the compound eye of a human being.

In this exhibition, images from the photo book have been rearranged in size and display to maximize the effect of the gallery space. Digitalized images from negatives have been printed out with inkjet on paper appropriate for each image after color and composite of images being adjusted. They are Ikko's first digital images and, computer has been used freely for image enhancement conventional process cannot achieve. Forty-five images in color and b/w are exhibited.