Hiroshi Watanabe

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a uniquely international literary star: born in in the Greek isles to a British military surgeon, he grew up in Ireland, France, and Ohio—with stops along the way in Louisiana and the Caribbean—before finally settling in Japan. It is this last destination that brought him his most lasting acclaim.

Kwaidan presents the complete text of Hearn’s classic 1903 book of Japanese ghost stories, collected during travels in his adopted homeland and presented in English for consumption by Western audiences. This edition pairs the original stories with twenty-eight photographs from celebrated photographer Hiroshi Watanabe, as well as an introduction from horror expert Paul Murray. Watanabe’s photographs provide illumination and illustration for these eerie tales. This new edition of a classic text is likely to appeal to worldwide fans of Japanese folklore, supernatural stories, and contemporary photography.

Photographer Hiroshi Watanabe's digital pictures range from seemingly ordinary details of quotidian life to poetic visual metaphors. "Ominous and touching," The Day the Dam Collapses (sparked by the birth of the artist's son) paints the cycles of life as fleeting, fragile, and devastatingly ephemeral. -- Hyperallergic

Born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan in 1951, Hiroshi Watanabe graduated from the Department of Photography of Nihon University in 1975. Watanabe moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a production coordinator for Japanese television commercials and later co-founded a Japanese coordination services company. Watanabe obtained an MBA from the UCLA Anderson Business School in 1993. Two years later, however, his earlier interest in photography was revived, and Watanabe started to travel worldwide, extensively photographing what he found intriguing at each moment and place. As of 2000, Watanabe has worked full-time at photography.

"For me, the work is a kind of mind game. I hope I am able to intrigue." -- Hiroshi Watanabe

California based Japanese-born photographer, Hiroshi Watanabe, has become an important force in photography over the past several years, with a growing list of monographs, artist’s books, exhibitions and awards to his credit. Known for his beautiful theatrical portraits of traditional Noh Masks of the Naito Clan and Kabuki Players, here he has taken a slightly different turn photographing artificial Japanese Sex Dolls as models, along with almost identical live models. The portraits are titled out of fictional characters in an accompanying short story by novelist Richard Curtis Hauschild and all reside in a fictional place, Love Point.

“After I photographed the dolls, I photographed real human models dressed similarly. I wanted to puzzle and confuse what is real and what is not. Of course, one can tell the difference once he/she knows there are both. I could have made them more same and thus indistinguishable if I manipulated the images digitally, but I kept them as they are on the film. I wanted to raise a question about perfectly (and easily) manipulated digital images that we see now everywhere”, Watanabe explained.

Love Point was a collaboration of many. Hiroo Okawa of 4woods created the dolls which gave Watanabe’s photographs their mysterious charm, along with the work of make-up artist, Kyoko Owada, stylist Hiromi Chiba, and models, Mariko Masu and Hiroko Sato. Richard Curtis Hauschild, “Bulldog”, wrote a strikingly original short story with the inspiration he received after looking at Hiroshi Watanabe’s photographs. Kunihiro Takahashi of Toseisha belief in the work prompted an “I will publish it” response on the spot when shown the photographs, with book design by Satsuki Ishikawa. And more recently, Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press, published the U.S. version, One Picture Book #66: Love Point (Nazraeli Press, 2011).

Watanabe's work is like a contemplative behavior that focuses on the breath so that the moment is fully free to emerge. So that the instant is lived as completely as it can be, Watanabe stays open for all the elements of discovery... the dried leaves in the foreground before the names of the dead. These are the illuminations of his pictures.

"These are honest and direct pictures; they bear a heavy silence, and are uncomplicated, singular ideas. These words invite a closer look uncompromised by time. They suggest a meditation that can bring to the surface what could otherwise have remained hidden - that opening in the sky beyond the child and his maze, and what it can mean." -- Anthony Bannon, George Eastman House Director