Izuru Takeya “Anon.”
Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition ”Anon.” by photographer Izuru Takeya, from Friday, June 26 to Saturday, August 8, 2026. This marks the artist's first exhibition at Zen Foto Gallery and features 20 carefully selected works from his long-term exploration of carbon printing, a classical photographic printing method that is not widely known in Japan. This series attempts to materialise anonymous landscapes and the accumulated passage of time within them, and makes its debut in this exhibition.
Carbon printing allows the selection of pigment colours, accurately reproduces the tonal range of the negative, and is highly archival. Takeya employs five types of pigments with varying hues and textures. The markings on the prints indicate the materials used: “SG” refers to Sumi ink Gensō, “SK” to Sumi ink Kuretake, “CB” to carbon black, “SB” to Speedball India ink, and “BC” to Black Cat India ink.
Each work has its own unique expression, allowing viewers to directly experience the relief and texture produced by the technique itself. When viewing the works together, what initially appears as an image gradually dissolves into a continuum of dots and lines. Ultimately, everything returns to a single form.
“‘Yomibitoshirazu’ refers to a term used in waka and haiku poetry meaning that the author is unknown or anonymous.
Cities and natural landscapes are marked with countless anonymous traces. These traces are born from the interplay of human action, weathering, intention, and chance, eventually transforming into something that belongs to no one. I have been drawn to these forms that have ‘come to be as they are.’
In this exhibition, I photographed both man-made objects and natural formations altered by time and weather, and transformed them into works using carbon printing, a classical photographic process. This pigment-based method feels less like printing an image and more like a way of physically preserving the sedimented accumulation of time itself.”
― Izuru Takeya
