Naoya Hatakeyama: Lime Works
(Factory-Series), 1991-94
©Naoya
Hatakeyama, Courtesey L.A. Galerie - Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt
The visual counterpart to Hatakeyama's observations in the Underground
are the frightening
pictures the photographer took of detonations in limestone quarries. Each
image shows hundreds or thousands of flying shards and rocks in the full
force of their outwardly directed movement. While the Underground
series leads the viewer to the boundaries of what he or she is willing to
see, the Blast project investigates the outer limits of what can be
recorded with a still camera image. For security reasons alone, an
observer isn't allowed to stand where the camera is standing; a human eye
could never encompass what the camera's cold eye is able to freeze.
Naoya Hatakeyama's photography investigates the gigantic construction we
call civilization. He inquires into where it begins and where it ends,
what it consists of and whether the image it creates of itself can stand
up to its own abyss. In the process, he has departed from the classical
genres of photography – landscape and street – had a good look at
installation, video art, and land art, and created a broad conceptual base
for his photographic ideas. Yet a trace of enigma remains, and Hatakeyama
uses this to add some explanations of his own. In a lecture at London's
Victoria and Albert Museum on November 9, 2001, he commented on his first
internationally known photographic series – the views of
lime works – with the following words:
"If the concrete
buildings and highways that stretch to the horizon are all made from
limestone dug from the hills, and if they should all be ground to dust and
this vast quantity of calcium carbonate returned to its precise points of
origin, why then, with the last spoonful, the ridge lines of the hills
would be restored to their original dimensions."
Naoya Hatakeyama: Blast, 1995-
©Naoya Hatakeyama, Courtesey L.A. Galerie - Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt
Behind a tabula rasa fantasy like this, the motif of damnation emerges:
civilization's collective guilt, its intervention in the elements, its
bent for self-destruction.
In his description of the River Series, Hatakeyama
expanded this vision. The following is his description of his role as
photographer in the canals:
"I wade alone through this quiet
river. Five meters above my head there are hundreds of thousands of
people rushing around, talking on telephones and shopping, but there is
nothing here to make me feel so. I am like an astronaut who has set foot
on an uninhabited planet. There used to be civilization on this planet.
One day, however, the people who created this civilization completely
vanished." Hatakeyama carries the idea of the big end into his
description, as well, when he says that "perspective" is "now in a state
of virtual ruin," and "it is this horizontal line that escapes its spell
and breaks free."
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Naoya Hatakeyama: River-Series, 1993-96,
Deutsche Bank Collection
©Naoya
Hatakeyama, Courtesey L.A. Galerie - Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt
In Germany, where the criticism of civilization – representation, goods,
machines, incalculability – is romantically anchored, Hatakeyama was
quickly accepted as an artist of natural philosophy. Evidently, however,
the ironic undertone of his self-description escaped notice. His
observation culminates in a reflection upon the line along which the city
and its mirror image meet in the River Series: "Just as I am on the
line, I realize that it occupies no space and, as if I were being
swallowed up by it, I vanish, too. Just like the people of the former
civilization." Here, we are looking at the decline of the declining, the
disappearance of the world judge into the black cocoon of his imagination,
into the end of all time. Obviously, the boundary to satire has already
been crossed.
Hatakeyama brought a strange diptych back with him from
Osaka, dated 1998 and 1999. It portrays a stadium twice. In the
first picture, night is falling and everything is intact. Oddly, however,
a settlement with 21 houses and a parking lot is situated in the middle
of the stadium. In the
second, later picture, not only has the settlement been completely
destroyed, but half of the stadium is demolished, as well. A gentle
evening light nestles into the lightly colored sand of a gigantic
construction site. With a wink of the eye, the photographer informs us
that his vision of the limestone's return into the mountain's wounds has
already begun.
Naoya Hatakeyama: River-Series, 1993-96, Deutsche Bank Collection
©Naoya Hatakeyama, Courtesey L.A. Galerie - Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt
Naoya Hatakeyama's work was first noticed in Germany in the group exhibition
on Japanese photography
Lust und Leere (Desire and Emptiness). Among the garish pandemonium of
his contemporaries, Hatakeyama's work seemed strangely out of place. In
the meantime, he can be regarded as an antipode, as a uniquely
productive documentary photographer who dares to put the Japanese
metropolis into context. Instead of dancing on the volcano, he observes
it. Hatakeyama is interested in everything that is constructive and of
substance. His image formats have remained modest, his photographs are
carefully worked down to the last detail. His fantastic book of the
Lime Works, long since unavailable, was reprinted last year in Japan.
In his mid-forties, Hatakeyama is a classic, but nobody can predict what
he will do next.
Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, born 1959, lives in
Frankfurt am Main. Critic, curator, teacher. Recently published: Die
Welt als Ganzes. Fotografie aus Deutschland nach 1989 (The World
as a Whole. Photography from Germany After 1989).
Translation:
Andrea Scrima
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