Photographer's Forum / Claire Sykes

Rising up through Tibet's Himalayas, the snow-covered peak of Mount Kailash glows as if illuminated from within, radiating a hallowed essence. The sacred site is one of hundreds around the world that Izu has photographed since 1979. His 14x20-inch large format, platinum/ palladium contact prints ”” among them, Egypt's Step Pyramid, Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, Machu Picchu and the Mayan ruins ”” appear in Kenro Izu: A Thirty Year Retrospective (Nazraeli Press, 2010), his ninth and most recent book. “It's not my purpose to photograph the architecture,” Izu tells me from his studio in Rhinebeck, New York (www.kenroizu.com). “I'm trying to photograph the air surrounding it. I feel that the accumulation of prayers over thousands of years is embedded in the atmosphere.”

For the past 30 years, Jim Vecchi’s camera has helped him turn his gaze inward. “My artworks are a reflection of my ongoing search for meaning,” he says. “I rely on beauty and the act of seeing to explore, question and reinterpret the way that we perceive the world.” Vecchi’s photographs offer a way in. It’s as [...]