Blast (#2611)

About the Photographer

Hatakeyama, Naoya

Japanese, b. 1958

In his Blast series, Naoya Hatakeyama enters quarries to capture the detonation of explosives intrinsic to the mining process. These photographs very effectively dramatize the instantaneous undoing of rock formations tens of thousands of years old. While the unchallenged human capacity for destruction is clearly the subject, the vantage point is cleverly selected so that rubble appears to threaten the artist and, by extension, the viewer. Hatakeyama’s work is included in the collections of The Tate; London, UK; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, CA; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN.