Hiroshi Watanabe (渡邉 博史, Watanabe Hiroshi) is a California-based Japanese photographer. His books include I See Angels Every Day and Findings.
Life and work
Born in
Sapporo,
Hokkaido, Japan,[1] in 1951,[citation needed] 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, but two years later his earlier interest in photography revived; from 2000 he has worked full-time at photography.
After five self-published books, Watanabe's first to be published conventionally was I See Angels Every Day, monochrome portraits of the patients and other scenes within San Lázaro psychiatric hospital in
Quito, Ecuador. This won the 2007
Photo City Sagamihara award for Japanese professional photographers.[2]
In 2005, a portfolio of his work was featured in Nueva Luz photographic journal, volume 10#3.[3] In 2007 Watanabe won a "Critical Mass" award from
Photolucida that allowed publication of his monograph Findings.
In 2008, his work of North Korea won Santa Fe Center Project Competition First Prize, and the book titled "Ideology of Paradise" was published in Japan.
He was invited and participated in commission projects such as "Real Venice" in 2010 (its exhibition was a program in 2011 Venice Biennale), "Bull City Summer" in 2013, and "The Art of Survival, Enduring Turmoil of Tule Lake" in 2014.
^Kokunai puro no bu: Sagamihara shashinshō" (国内プロの部:さがみはら写真賞), in Sagamihara Sōgō Shashinsai Fotoshiti Sagamihara 2007 kōshiki gaidobukku (相模原市総合写真祭 フォトシティさがみはら2007 公式ガイドブック), pp. 5–10. This booklet is the official guidebook to Photo City Sagamihara 2007.
^"En Foco". Nueva Luz Photographic Journal. 21 August 2008. Archived from
the original on 21 August 2008. Retrieved 2019-10-12.
^Houston, Eastman, Santa Barbara, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and San Jose Museum of Art: according to the biography in the Photo City Sagamihara 2007 booklet.