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The Arts Intel Report

Ikkō Narahara "Rrose Sélavy"

Nov 1 – Dec 21, 2019
6 Chome-5-24 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-0032, Japan

In 1973, Ikkō Narahara walked into the Philadelphia Museum of Art on assignment. He’d been commissioned to photograph Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). Narahara had previously vowed never to step foot in a museum with a camera: it wasn’t his vocation. But when he arrived in the exhibition room, he became fascinated by the shifting light refraction on Duchamp’s glass work, and took a series of photographs that propelled him, unwillingly, into museum photography stardom. In his series “Rrose Sélavy,” seven of the Large Glass photographs will be featured. —E.C.