PHOTO:Naoki Ishikawa

Since his late teens, Naoki Ishikawa has been travelling to the earth’s far corners and has scaled the highest peaks on all seven continents. He climbed Mount Everest twice before receiving his PhD in fine art. Photographs, to him, gradually became something far beyond travel records; they rose to the level of contemporary artworks.

By EfiMichalarou
Photo: Art Tower Mito Archive

“Capturing the Map of Light on This Planet” is the first large-scale solo exhibition by Naoki Ishikawa, a photographer who is active around the globe. Ishikawa completed a human-powered journey from the North Pole to the South Pole at the age of 22, succeeded in summiting the Seven Summits at 23, and continues to journey to diverse places. He has drawn much attention by shedding new light on our everyday and on the world through his unique style of photography, which integrates the perspectives of anthropology and folklore. Trying to climb the world’s highest mountains is no easy feat, but it is made all the more challenging when carrying a number of cameras and attempting to take photos of ice falls or dramatic crevasses in mid-climb. Ishikawa had to constantly chip ice off the camera lens to get the shots he desired. In this exhibition are on presentation works for all his series, including: ones on polar regions, when he visited the Arctic in 2000 as part of the “Pole to Pole 2000” Project, where he travelled from the North Pole to the South Pole in nine months. In Himalaya when he took 120 rolls of film along and on returning produced a series of work called “8848”, referencing the height of the world’s tallest mountain. The series: “CORONA” in which he visited Polynesian, “NEW DIMENSION” in which he visited cave paintings around the world, and “ARCHIPELAGO” in which he explored the islands that spread north–south in the Japanese archipelago. These works are introduced in a comprehensive fashion, interwoven with his unpublished works. Throughout his career Ishikawa has shown a strong interest in technique and wisdom for living handed down for generations in various areas around the globe. He has also consistently explored the organic network of places that divisions such as borders cannot fully capture. Ishikawa’s extensive quest with his eyes and feet is an anthropological fieldwork and at the same time can be seen as an endless journey to pursue art, whose original meaning is “technique.”

Info: Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, 1-6-8 Goken-cho, Mito-shi, Duration: 17/12/1-26/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 9:30-18:00, http://www11.arttowermito.or.jp