In the mid-90s, there was a short-lived fashion magazine called "Jappu" which latter changed its name to "Zyappu". It became known for the quirky decision to eschew kanji and kana for some of its articles and instead write them in romaji. More famously, it featured a series of photographs by Kaoru Izima who had started the magazine so he had somewhere to publish them. Izima would shoot his subjects, usually well-known actresses, singers or models, wearing outfits by leading designers of the day. The titles were always simple - "Shinohara Ryoko wears Vivienne Westwood" - but his setting for the pictures had top stars queuing up to pose for him.
The concept for Izima's series was to portray the models as corpses. Sometimes it was clear there had been foul play as in the shot of Kyoko Koizumi stuffed into a suitcase dumped in a wood, wearing an outfit by Sybilla, which was the first to be published. Most appear to be murder victims but some of the vignettes might be read as accidents or suicides. The reason to bring him up now is the publication late last year of an international edition of his collection entitled "Landscapes With a Corpse", accompanied by short essays in English and German. Izima is also exhibiting new work at the Von Lintell Gallery in New York. A quick search on the web has thrown up a few of his better known pictures but you can only get an idea of what he is up to because of their size. Nevertheless, I'll post a few here and you can read a couple of articles about him here and here.
(More pictures follow in the next posts)
