Opening and Book Signing: Friday December 12th from 5-7pm
photo-eye BOOKSTORE + PROJECT SPACE, 376 Garcia Street Suite A, Santa Fe
Exhibition runs through February 14th, 2015
photo-eye Bookstore + Project Space is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Hiroshi Watanabe entitled The Day The Dam Collapses in celebration of his new monograph of the same title published by Daylight Books and Tosei-Sha. Watanabe will be at the exhibition signing books. Unlike Watanabe’s previous projects, which have demanded extensive travel to explore his curiosity, the images that make up The Day The Dam Collapses are considerably more personal. The photographs were made over a five-year period (2008-2013) beginning after the birth of his youngest son and explore subject matter sourced from his everyday life. In the form of small-scale intimate color photographs, Watanabe observes the ordinary with an eye towards the beautifully fragile and ephemeral parts of life. Watanabe states in his introduction: “the truth is, we are all living like the characters in a disaster movie. We know we may someday face a disaster or a terrible event, but we keep living calmly as we do not know what and when that might occur. But a disaster will surely come to us.”
Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan. After studying photography at Nihon University (Japan), he moved to Los Angeles (1975) to work on TV commercials where he eventually became a producer and started his own production company. In 2000 he made the decision to closed his production company so that he could focus on his personal vision as a fine art photographer. Since then, Watanabe’s photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in a number of public and private collections including Santa Barbara Museum of Art, George Eastman House and the Houston Museum of Fine Art, as well as in the form of a number of monographs. Watanabe now splits his time between Los Angeles and Japan.
For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact Anne Kelly: 505.988.5152 x121 or anne@photoeye.com