“As I drove across the land in Arizona and Utah and New Mexico, I began to have hallucinations that this was not the earth at all and that I had been thrown onto some other planet.”
—Ikkō NaraharaSince his widely acclaimed debut exhibition Human Land in 1956, Ikkō Narahara (1931-2020), known by his first name Ikko overseas, continued to explore his distinctive approach to photography aimed at creating a ‘personal document’, resulting in images that embraced the tension between reality and abstraction, objectivity and subjectivity. A member of the short-lived yet highly influential Tokyo-based art agency Vivo (1959-61) alongside Shōmei Tōmatsu, Kikuji Kawada and Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko went on to photograph various places around the world while living in Paris (1962-65) and in New York (1970-74).
It was during this time that Ikko travelled across the United States, which led to his seminal 1970-74 series and 1975 book Where Time Has Vanished. With his surreal sensibility, the Japanese photographer captured the vast American landscape, embarking on a new chapter in his photographic practice that transcends physical and temporal constraints. In the accompanying monograph to his 2004 retrospective Mirror of Space and Time at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, he describes his philosophy:
‘The reason why we feel surrounded by the pathos of being alive and immersed in depths of inexpressible nostalgia when we look back on photographs is probably that we then encounter a “vanished time” which transcends our own existence.’
This timeless blurring of the border between dream and reality is most evident in the present work Two Garbage Cans, Indian Village, New Mexico – two garbage cans appear to dance together in midair against the otherworldly landscape of a deserted village in New Mexico. Taken in mountaintop Acoma Pueblo, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America known as ‘Sky City’, the garbage cans were suspended in the centre of the village square to keep out of reach of dogs and coyotes.
Creo, Ikko Narahara: Where Time Has Vanished 1970-1974. This arresting composition is a window into Ikko’s poetic, spiritual and introspective vision of the world around him. The current offering is an early, exhibition-sized print, made by the photographer in 1973 in New York. In 1974, his final year in NY, Ikko took part in The Museum of Modern Art’s New Japanese Photography, the first extensive survey of contemporary Japanese photography outside Japan. As the key image from Where Time Has Vanished, Two Garbage Cans was included in that exhibition and later appeared on the cover of the revised edition of the photobook.
His work has been featured in countless exhibitions, including Japan: A Self-Portrait at the International Center of Photography, New York (1979), The History of Japanese Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004) as well as retrospectives at the Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris (2002-03) and at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2004). Smaller sized prints of Two Garbage Cans, Indian Village, New Mexico reside in the following institutions: the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.
Exhibition install of New Japanese Photography
at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974.Provenance
Ikkō Narahara Archives
Exhibited
Ikko, George Eastman House, Rochester, 16 November 1973 - 10 January 1974
New Japanese Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 27 March - 19 May 1974
Photographie 1945-1985, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 1987
Ikko Narahara, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 12 December 2002 - 9 March 2003
Ikko Narahara: Mirror of Space and Time, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 22 May - 11 July 2004
Ikko Narahara: The Sky in My Hands, Shimane Art Museum, Matsue, 30 July - 13 September 2010Literature
Asahi Shimbun, Ikko Narahara: Where Time Has Vanished, pl. 7
Creo, Ikko Narahara: Where Time Has Vanished 1970-1974, cover and pl. 22
The Museum of Modern Art, New Japanese Photography, p. 78
Iwanami-shoten, Ikko Narahara: Japanese Photographers Vol. 31, cover and pl. 27
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Ikko Narahara, p. 74
Shimane Art Museum, Ikko Narahara: The Sky in My Hands, p. 378
ULTIMATE
40
インディアン村の二つのゴミ缶 Two Garbage Cans, Indian Village, New Mexico from 消滅した時間 Where Time Has Vanished
1972
Gelatin silver print, printed 1973.
Image: 33 x 49 cm (12 7/8 x 19 1/4 in.)
Sheet: 40 x 50.1 cm (15 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.)
Signed, annotated 'AP.1. IKKO' by the artist and 'Printed by IKKO, in NYC, Oct, 73' by Keiko Narahara, the artist's widow, all in pencil on the verso.
This work is a rare, early print made by the artist while based in New York (1970-74). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, holds a similar-sized print of this image, which was included in their 1974 landmark exhibition New Japanese Photography. This is the first auction offering of an early print of Two Garbage Cans, arguably Ikko’s most famous image.
Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 ‡
Sold for £17,780
Rachel Peart
Head of Department, London
RPeart@phillips.com
Yuka Yamaji
Head of Photographs, Europe
YYamaji@phillips.com
Clare Lamport
Head of Sale, Associate Specialist
CLamport@phillips.com
General Inquiries
+44 20 7318 4092
Photographs
London Auction 21 November 2024
23
This lot is no longer available.
