Lot 176: River Series, 1993-1994

River Series, 1993-1994
Nine colour coupler prints, printed 2000. 54 x 26.7 cm. (21 1/4 x 10 1/2 in).  Each signed, titled, dated, numbered 5/15 and sequentially numbered in ink on a label affixed to the reverse of the flush-mount.

 Thames & Hudson, Photo Art: The New World of Photography, London, 2008, p.179, No. 4,5,7,8 illustrated; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The History of Japanese Photography, 2003, p.266, No.4 illustrated

 L.A Galerie, Frankfurt

After the wide vistas of the quarries and factory towns, Hatakeyama’s subsequent River Series (1993-1994) viewed the city of Tokyo with a ‘different eye’. He found the cityscape of the nation’s capital ‘so tight that it was hard to photograph with a standard camera’, forcing him to turn the 6 x 12 cm negative on its side for vertical swipes of the city. Initially, bridges provided a comfortable, open platform, but climbing down the sides of the concrete-lined culverts in which Tokyo’s ‘rivers’ now flow led to unexpected visions. Setting the lens at the level of the river’s wall, he not only balances the composition just as Hiroshi Sugimoto does in his Seascapes Series but also concocts a series of visual, conceptual, and poetic parallels and tensions: above and below, liquid and solid, water, earth, and sky, man and nature, heaven and hell.
Kotaro Iizawa, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The History of Japanese Photography, 2003, p. 267