For the past thirty years, Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama has undertaken a photographic examination of the life of cities and the built environment. Each of his series focuses on a different facet of the growth and transformation of the urban landscape—from studies of architectural maquettes to the extraction and use of natural materials such as limestone, as it is quarried via explosive blasts and subsequently incorporated into the construction of new buildings. In particular, Hatakeyama has routinely returned to the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolis, exploring this ever-evolving urban sprawl from both below and above, mapping the growth and expansion of these sites over time. Additional series focus on other forms of human intervention with the landscape and natural materials, including factories and building sites in Japan and abroad. Finally, his most recent photographs of his hometown of Rikuzentakata, a fishing town that was almost completely destroyed by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, are also included—an ongoing series begun almost immediately following the disaster. These photographs hauntingly embody the death and rebirth of the city, manifesting a deeply personal connection to the ongoing intersection of geology, architecture, and time.
Copublished by Aperture and the Minneapolis Institute of Art on the occasion of the exhibition Excavating the Future City: Photographs by Naoya Hatakeyama at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, March 4–July 22, 2018.
Naoya Hatakeyama (born in Rikuzentakata, Japan, 1958) is included in some of the most important public collections in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He co-represented Japan in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, and was given his first solo museum exhibition outside of Japan in 2002 at Kunstverein Hannover. He joined the architect Toyo Ito and others in their efforts on the Golden Lion award–winning exhibition Architecture. Possible here? “Home-for-All,” representing Japan in the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2012. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art installed a solo exhibition in 2012, originally organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
Yasufumi Nakamori, PhD (essay) is the curator and head of the department of photography and new media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.Toyo Ito (contribution) is a Japanese architect, winner of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, and an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Philippe Forest (contribution) is the author of L’Enfant éternel (1997; winner of the Prix Femina), Toute la nuit (1999), and Sarinagara (1994; winner of the Prix Décembre).