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Sacred Sites: Silk Road Photographs by Kenro Izu

June 9, 2002 - January 5, 2003

Museum: Sackler Gallery

Location: Vever Galleries

On view are 27 of Japanese-born, New York photographer Kenro Izu's large-format platinum prints (14 x 20 inches) of sacred sites set along the historic silk trading road. These sites include monasteries, royal tombs, ancient cities, and small personal shrines set amid the immense grandeur of the Himalayas and vast, desolate deserts in western China, Ladakh, and Tibet. Reaching beyond the purely documentary, his prints are both starkly clear and evocatively dream-like. Emphasizing both beauty and decay, these photographs serve as commentaries on the passage of time as they picture a range of Buddhist achievements and expressions that spread across the Asian landscape. Note: This exhibition complemented the Smithsonian's 2002 Folklife Festival.