Landscapes with a Corpse, Izima Kaoru.
Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen, 2007.
to make one’s self visible in the moment of disappearance
— Izima Kaoru
Life & Death
Izima Kaoru’s twenty-year-long project of photographing Landscapes with a Corpse is as fresh and new as it is old and traditional. Art History’s Baroque Memento mori paintings while glorious in their way, tended to be a little more decomposed and a little less Prada than Kaoru’s photographs. Part fashion photography, part landscape, crime, cinema, these images are the rare opportunity to see one’s own death, and then get up and walk away from it.
Your Activity
In your Art110 Landscapes with a Corpse activity inspired by Kaoru, you imagine your departure, and create a photographic self-portrait. You can have all the help you like, but the image should be of yourself. Ideally, 2 or 3 or 4 Art110 students could get together and help each other produce their images. Some of you will, no doubt, have a lot of fun with “movie blood,” although none is required, capturing the great stillness of life is sufficient. You can use any “legal” space on or off campus. Clean up. Work together. Share props. Help each other take pix!
Blog It
• Blog your photo
• say a little bit about your thoughts on creating this scene.
Landscapes with a Corpse, Izima Kaoru.
Koike Kiko wears Gianni Versace, 2004.
Landscapes with a Corpse – Documentary Trailer from Chad Fahs on Vimeo.
