Makalu

“From the top of Makalu, Everest and Lhotse looked like twin peaks.”
(Excerpted from Naoki Ishikawa, for Everest)

IMA Gallery’s fourth exhibition “Makalu” features photographs taken by Naoki Ishikawa as he climbed Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain located on the border between Nepal and Tibet.

Ishikawa first climbed Mt. Everest when he was only 23. In 2011, he successfully climbed it for the second time ten years later. For Ishikawa, who has been traveling around the world since his teens, the Himalaya Mountains are his roots. In recent years, he has been at work on his “Himalaya” series, which he shot on mountains Qomolangma, the world’s highest mountain, Lhotse, the fourth highest, next to it, and Mansalu also known as “spirit mountain.” All of them are over 8,000 meters tall, and inaccessible to ordinary people. For the final chapter in this series, this past spring, Ishikawa climbed Makalu, known as one of the most difficult mountains to climb in the world, with a medium format camera. His beautiful images of glaciers and snow-covered mountains, shot in extremely arduous conditions, will be presented as a part of a unique mountain-shaped installation also featuring the map he used to climb Makalu.