"The flower beings—fluttering, leaning and twisting in motion with a myriad of feelings—they are partaking in the “Dance of Life”. In darkness, there is light; sorrow, joy and death, life. In nothingness, there is everything. Beauty can be found in every stage of a fleeting life cycle: as that of a bud, full bloom or even as a withering flower." - Yumiko Izu
Yumiko Izu studied at the Visual Arts School in Osaka, Japan, her hometown. After moving to the United States, she studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography in California, where she received a B.A. degree. In 1998, Yumiko moved to New York City and started working on various assignments in advertising and editorial photography.
In 2003, she began her professional career in fine art photography, using the platinum-palladium printing process and an 8 x 10 camera. In 2008, she started producing large-scale pigment prints.
"The flower’s life is a metaphor that reflects on the fleetingness of human life. Our existence is one of impermanence and as beings in a universe we are so fragile. Like a delicate blossom, we live to our fullest, knowing all along that gradually we too fade away." - Yumiko Izu
Yumiko is a recipient of the 2007 Photographers' Fellowship from the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Work from her series Secret Garden has been featured in Ralph Lauren’s stores internationally.
Since 2011, Yumiko has been working on a still life series of animal skulls using an 11x 14 camera. Studying the interplay of life and death, which has long abandoned these relics, Yumiko will show the work in Tokyo, Japan, in late 2013.
Yumiko currently lives and works in Rhinebeck, New York.