HIROSHI WATANABE. Santa Monica Pier, 2000. 13.9x13.9" gelatin sliver print. Printed 2009. Signed, dated, and editioned (10/15) in pencil on print verso; miscellaneous printer's marks in pencil.

Hiroshi Watanabe is an internationally famous California-based Japanese photographer. Born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan in 1951, Watanabe graduated from the Department of Photography of Nihon University in 1975 and moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a production coordinator for Japanese television commercials and later co-founded a Japanese coordination services company. He obtained an MBA from UCLA in 1993. Two years later he revived his earlier interest in photography, and from 2000 on he has worked full-time at photography.

After five self-published books, Watanabe's first photo book to be published conventionally was I See Angels Every Day, monochrome portraits of the patients and other scenes within San Lazaro psychiatric hospital in Quito, Ecuador. This won the 2007 Photo City Sagamihara award for Japanese professional photographers. In 2005, a portfolio of his work was featured in Nueva Luz photographic journal, volume 10.3. In 2007 Watanabe won a Critical Mass award from Photolucida that allowed publication of his monograph Findings. In 2008, his work on North Korea won the Santa Fe Center Project Competition First Prize, and the book Ideology of Paradise was published in Japan.

Watanabe's works are in the permanent collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, George Eastman House, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others.

Excellent. Moderate edge wear.