Ikko Narahara helped define a style that shaped Japanese street photography and influenced artists worldwide. He was a founding member of one of Japan’s first street photography collectives, VIVO, alongside Eikoh Hosoe and Shōmei Tōmatsu, laying the groundwork for future movements.

Born in 1931, he earned a master’s in art and developed his voice through time in Japan, Paris, and the U.S. His work evolved dramatically over the decades, especially beginning in the 1990s, when he embraced digital tools and medical imaging. Themes like life, death, time, and the human condition run throughout his work, with a retrospective that emphasizes profound personal reflection. This article is meant to give you a snapshot at the diversity of all that he created throughout his career.

Narahara’s first exhibition, Human Land, debuted at Matsushima Gallery in 1956 and featured two projects about people living in extreme conditions. One focused on Hashima Island, nicknamed Battleship Island for its silhouette. Once home to 5,000 people working in Mitsubishi’s coal mines, it was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Now abandoned for over 40 years, it stands as a haunting World Heritage site.

The second project in Human Land focused on villagers living near an active volcano on Sakurajima Island, where a 1914 eruption left them without access to groundwater. The exhibition’s impact launched Narahara’s career, prompting him to later reflect that without it, “all the various photographs I have taken since then would never have been possible.” He continued documenting people living in isolation, leading to the 1971 book Ohkoku (Man and his Land), which combined earlier projects on Trappist monks and women in prison. Narahara viewed both groups as closed-off worlds, using them to explore his own feelings of alienation and inner emptiness.

“I felt a need to put myself in the psychological time and space of both of these places. There, it seemed to me, people were probing more deeply into their souls than they do in the crowded conditions of ordinary life. In the garden of silence that was the monastery, I also met some orphans whose parents had been killed by the atomic bombs. The air of the human heart and mind is closed off yet also open to the outside. The same is true of photographs.”

In the 1960s and 70s, Narahara traveled through Europe and the U.S., creating some of his most significant work. His project Where Time Has Stopped, long out of print until 2022, challenged traditional documentary photography with unconventional compositions and a meditative view on mortality. The title came from a moment in Paris where he reflected on how people exist only briefly in our perception. During this period, Narahara was diagnosed with a kidney condition that briefly halted his work. He described his vision turning circular without the structure of photography, inspiring his project En-Circular Vision, a book of images cropped into circles—an unusual and dreamlike visual experiment that carried into his later digital work.

In the 1960s, Narahara turned to fashion photography, drawn by its artistic possibilities—viewing models as “living artistic shapes” and blending candid shots with staged imagery. He embraced the field’s excitement and creative freedom. Most of his fashion work ran in magazines, notably Asahi Camera’s monthly series from 1962.

His 1959 partnership with designer Hanae Mori produced the film The World of Hanae Mori, leading to lifelong collaborations in publications like Fujin Gaho, where—with Mitsuo Katsui—he helped revolutionize magazine layouts.

Narahara fell in love with Venice the moment he arrived, struck by the sight of city walls rising from black water, illuminated by boat headlights. His deep connection to the city led to three dedicated projects: Nightscapes, Arcades of Light, and Venetian Light. Nightscapes reflects on death and loss during a difficult period in the 1970s, while also evoking a sense of rebirth through the city’s nighttime presence. In Arcades of Light, he photographed all 128 arches in Piazza San Marco, aiming to capture their echoing rhythm in darkness.

Venetian Light explores the duality of aging and inner youth, likening Venice’s ancient beauty to the spirit of celebration found in its masked festivals.

In the 1970s, Narahara traveled across the U.S., struck by its vastness and alien feel, which he described as “the closest country to outer space.” This impression shaped his project Where Time Has Vanished, exploring photography’s connection to cosmic energy and memory. Inspired by the Apollo 17 launch and later his visit to the Grand Canyon, he reflected on the overlap of human time and interstellar time. In Celebration of Life, he documented a 1971 Louisiana rock festival, aiming to balance being both participant and photographer in a portrait of shared experience.

His final American series, Broadway, New York, used intersecting, low-angle diamond-shaped images to convey the raw, spontaneous energy he felt uniquely on Broadway.

In his final creative phase, Narahara embraced digital and medical photography. Inspired by his first Macintosh in 1985, he felt he had discovered “Aladdin’s lamp.” In 1990, he created Rebirth using isotope photography to capture internal anatomy, blending it with objects from the outside world to explore connections between the human body and the universe. He expanded on this with Inner Flower, using x-rays to photograph his own body, linking the process to early photographic pioneers like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy. Later projects such as Vertical Horizon and Double Vision emerged from personal medical experiences, including surgery and double vision.

His final works, Lover of Time and Heaven, reflect on mortality and the idea that photographs may already exist in the future, waiting to be discovered.