Naoya Hatakeyama was born in 1958 in Rikuzentakata, Japan. In 1984 he graduated from the University of Tsukuba, where he had first studied painting and then photography, under Ōtsuji Kiyoji. He had his first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 1983. In 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Kimura Ihei Photography Prize (Kimura Ihei Shashin-shō) and accepted a residency program in California. His works were exhibited at Frankfurt’s L.A. Galerie in 1998. In 2001 he was an artist-in-residence in England and was presented along with other artists in the Japanese Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale. His sublimely gloomy photographs trace man’s uses of nature. In 2003 he photographed the razing of the Westphalian colliery. The photographer’s works are found in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam and the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela. Hatakeyama lives and works in Tokyo.
