Signed, titled, dated, and inscribed at the center of the verso.
Light curling of the surface.
Small impact mark at lower left corner.

Narahara Ikko (1931–2020) was a leading post-war Japanese and internationally renowned photographer. Owing to his father’s occupation as a prosecutor, he spent his childhood in Nagasaki, a city rich in international culture. Although he initially pursued law studies like his father, his encounter with the Shaka Triad at Hōryū-ji Temple in Nara led him to devote himself to the arts. He entered the master’s program in art history at Waseda University, where he became fascinated by avant-garde art and joined the emerging painters’ group Jitsuzaisha. In 1954, while touring his motherland Kyushu, he visited and photographed Hashima Island off the coast of Nagasaki, known as Gunkanjima, and the volcanic ash-covered village of Kurokamimura on Sakurajima, and in 1956 held his first solo exhibition, “Human Land”, which contrasted Kurokamimura Village, devastated by volcanic ash from an eruption, with the isolated Hashima Island, where people lived with remarkable vitality, and made a powerful impact on the Japanese photography community. In 1959, he established the VIVO agency with Higashimatsu Shomei, Hosoe Eikoh and others. Narahara continued to travel and document life around the world, exhibiting both domestically and internationally.

The three works in this auction are all from Narahara's iconic series. Narahara moved to Paris, France, in 1961 and photographed various parts of Europe. As part of this, he produced Secrets in 1964. The shadows of five birds suggest the “still time” created by photography. The following work, Beside the pool, Lake Powell (Utah, 1971), was taken during his stay in the US (1970-74). This work is part of his representative series “Where Time Has Vanished”, and was taken in 1971 on a trip across the Historic Route 66 to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell. Lightning in Piazza San Marco was shot during a visit to Venice in 1983, capturing the flashes of lightning in Piazza San Marco at night. This is one of the representative works of ‘Venice–Nightscapes’, which was published in 1985.