Kenro Izu: Light Over Ancient Angkor by Izu, Kenro; Hosoe, Eikoh; Umesao, Tadao; Jessup, Helen Ibbitson - 1997

New York: Friends Without a Border, 1997. The cover is matte white cardstock with a platinum photo print of Ta Phrohm. The book includes an artist statement by Kenro Izu,, biographical essay by Eikoh Hosoe, 'Angkor Wat and the Gion Shirne' by Tadao Umesa, and 'The Genius of the Khmers' by Helen Ibbitson Jessup; plus a Kenro Izu Chronology and a map of the Angkor and a list of major monuments, and 65 wonderful full-page photographic plates. The platinum print is a revival of a 19th-century method of printing directly from negatives onto treated paper, and exposing to ultraviolet (sunlight). In order to procure large-format negatives, Izu had special large format cameras and film custom made and carried this 200 pound gear into the still-treacherous Cambodian sites. The beauty of a platinum print cannot be produced by any other method - the prints are rich, the blacks saturated and gradation of grays without limit. Details are spectacular against this velvety texture. While Izu was moved by the stone monuments at Angkor, one can't help but admire the integration of strangler figs (banyan) and other vines into the monuments. The plants transmit a sense of the impermanence of human-made objects, even though the stone that they are created from is eons old. The thick, fleshy trunks of the banyans and the traceries of their roots into, around, and through the human art create new sculptural forms even as they inter the old. While the texts of the book concentrate on the monuments and their history, it is this urgency of life and the eeriness of an alien assimulation that holds the eye and moves the spirit. The photographer used proceeds from this work to create Friends Without a Border, an organization to provide health care to Asian children, particularly those Cambodian children who were injured by land mines. This copy is in about new condition. PHOTO 4626. Second Edition. Paperbound. About as New Condition. Illus. by Kenro Izu. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" (square format). Photogprahy.