17 February 2014
Like Steve McCurry or Sebastião Salgado, Kazuyoshi Nomachi (1946) belongs to that tradition of photojournalism which is able to take a glance and turn it into a piece of visual history. His pictures, always monumental and stretching as far as the eye can see (even when they are in a small format), investigate human spirituality in some of the most hostile or remote regions of the Earth. Now, a retrospective entitled “The Ways of the Sacred” at the MACRO Testaccio—La Pelanda in Rome retraces the stages of his photographic journey: from his first expedition to the Sahara in 1972, to Tibet, where he has studied Buddhism from close up, passing by the Ganges, where he has probed the Hindu tradition. Nomachi was the first photographer to document the pilgrimage to Mecca (his work on the sacred cities of Islam took him five years, from 1995 to 2000), while more recently he has turned his attention to South America, looking at the relations between Catholicism and the Inca civilization. In his pictures, light is the undisputed protagonist: dazzling and soft, it envelops the figures and places, setting them in an absolute dimension that has the sweep of an epic tale.
Kazuyoshi Nomachi, Le vie del Sacro
La Pelanda, MACRO Testaccio
Curated by Peter Bottazzi
Rome
December 14, 2013 – May 4, 2014
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Sudan del Sud, 2012.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Nelle vicinanze di Benares, India, 2005.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. La Mecca, Arabia Saudita, 1995.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Tibet, 1991.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Qoyllur Ritti, Perù, 2004.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. La Mecca, Arabia Saudita, 1995.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Kerzaz, Algeria, 1972.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Cuzco, Perù, 2002.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Sudan del Sud, 1981.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Ritti, Perù, 2004.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. India, 2008.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Nei pressi di Lalibela. Etiopia, 1996.
© Kazuyoshi Nomachi. Etiopia, 1997.
Kazuyoshi Nomachi