PAUL PALETTI GALLERY EXHIBITS WORK OF INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER KENRO IZU

“Sacred Places” makes Louisville debut as a fundraiser for the Angkor Hospital for Children

LOUISVILLE, KY 7/31/08 — “Sacred Places,” the photographs of Kenro Izu, will open as part of the First Friday Gallery Hop from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on September 5, 2008 at Paul Paletti Gallery, 713 East Market Street. The exhibit will be on display until November 28, 2008.

During a series of trips to photograph the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, Kenro Izu was moved by his encounters with children disfigured by landmines and in need of medical care. As a way of returning something to Cambodia, he founded a nonprofit organization, Friends Without A Border, and built the Angkor Hospital for Children in 1999. Since that time, the hospital has treated over 560,000 children.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of photographs in this exhibit will be donated to Friends Without a Border to support the hospital and its mission.

Over the last 30 years, Izu has photographed the world’s ancient sacred sites, including Egypt’s pyramids, the Mayan ruins, the shrines of India and Thailand, and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple. His recent work has focused on the people and sacred Buddhist sites in Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Tibet.

Izu’s subjects include monasteries, royal tombs, ancient cities and small personal shrines, set within pervasive jungles or amid limitless Himalayan vistas. He compassionately portrays the people living in these delicate and fragile cultures using a custom-made camera, creating 14-by-20-inch negatives. He contact prints the negatives making rich platinum prints, conveying the grandeur of his subjects with the subtlest of tones.

Kenro Izu was born in Osaka, Japan and grew up near Hiroshima. He abandoned his early ambition to become a doctor to study fine art photography in Tokyo. In 1970, he left school and moved to New York City, where he became a commercial photographer. Known also for his still-lifes of decaying flowers and sensuous nudes, Izu first photographed monumental ruins in Egypt in 1979.

Izu’s work is in the collections of museums around the world, including: Galleria Civica Modena, Italy; Metropolitan Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; J. Paul Getty Museum; the Smithsonian Institute; and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan.

Paul Paletti Gallery is the only gallery in the region devoted exclusively to fine art, museum-quality photography. It is located in the law offices of Sturm, Paletti, and Wilson. The gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and by appointment.