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 13 December 2002 - 23 February 2003 Extension until March 9, 2003 Who is Ikko Narahara? Though less well-known in France than other Japanese photographers of his generation (he was born in 1931) such as Eikoh Hosoe, Narahara has produced a body of images that is as profuse as it is varied. He has visited Europe and the States many times, and his work reflects the acute interest the educated Japanese have in the Western world, in particular its art and its thought. Narahara's American pictures are the ones that perhaps most readily come to mind, but his early work from the 50s had a documentary slant and spoke of post-war Japan, a country struggling to get over the ordeal its people had suffered. The MEP show includes Narahara's moving photographic account of the lives of miners on Gunkajima Island: a series of images which constitute both a social documentary and the revelation of an extraordinary place. In Japan, Narahara also explored such unexpected environments as a woman's prison and a trappist monastery, but oddly enough it was not until he left his own country that he became interested in more traditional images of Japanese civilization. This outsider's insight, with images coming from the least expected quarters, can be found in the major work he completed in the USA in the 70s called "Where Time has Vanished". Here he ignored the reality that was the stock-in-trade of American street photographers, or at least he looked at it from a very different angle. Ultimately, every aspect of Narahara's work carries within it both a questioning of the chosen subject and a questioning of the self via the medium of photography. By inviting the viewer to look back on fifty years of photography, the MEP exhibition provides a measure of the way a particular photographic approach - by turns documentary, autobiographical and experimental - has evolved over time. The accompanying book is a useful complement to the exhibition as it includes extensive passages from Narahara's own writings, reflecting the genuine depth and originality of his thought. Gabriel Bauret
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