Inspired by the images of the Victorian Francis Frith and by the early photographic expeditions to Egypt, in 1979 he undertook his first journey to the land of the Pyramids, where he was deeply impressed by the spirituality of the place and by the profound sense of transience inspired by the sight of the ruins, whose enormous stones rise like imposing traces of humankind’s constructive action.

From this experience, and from the photographs taken during that journey, the series Sacred Places began to take shape—a body of work that would, over time, become one of the cornerstones of his research. For more than thirty years, Izu pushed toward increasingly distant destinations, photographing some of the world’s most evocative sacred sites, from Scotland to Mexico, from Cambodia to India and Indonesia, from Syria to Tibet, from Peru to Easter Island.

For years Izu sought sacred stone architecture both in the most touristic destinations and in the most remote places of worship in the world, reached through long journeys on foot, sometimes on horseback, carrying with him dozens of kilograms of analog photographic equipment and a limited number of negatives. The compositions are always rigorous, and the pace is slow, in keeping with the spiritual dimension of the subjects portrayed.

It is worth recalling that in 1984, thanks to a grant of 16,000 dollars from the American National Endowment for the Arts, he turned to the renowned workshop of Jack Deardoff to develop a view camera for 35×50 cm negatives—an unprecedented example of the largest portable camera in the world.

Starting from a body of work that excluded the human figure from any composition, Izu later reconsidered his position, beginning to regard people as the completion of sacred places—or rather as the element that had made them sacred.

Available Works