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Blast (#0608), Naoya Hatakeyama, 1995
Naoya HatakeyamaJapanese, 1958

Blast (#0608)

1995 · Photograph

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Not on view at present

Where is “Blast (#0608)” now? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Not on view at present. Checked October 12, 2026.

Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

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About the work

Writing recently in the Japanese photography journal IMA, writer Dan Abbe called Naoya Hatakeyama “one of the most cerebral Japanese photographers working today.” Blast is from his first project, which addressed limestone quarries around Japan, capturing in photography and video detonation and other excavation procedures that permit the extraction of limestone. Further projects have dealt with coal waste in France and the network of service tunnels in Tokyo—manifestations of a destructive human systematization of the natural landscape.

Read on

This explosive image makes literal the impact of human behavior on the natural world. Hatakeyama began the Blast series in 1995 as an extension of an earlier project documenting limestone quarries and processing factories across Japan. The raw stuff of the built environment, limestone is the main ingredient in cement as well as Japan’s most plentiful mineral resource. As Hatakeyama describes it, “the quarries and the cities are like negative and positive images of a single photograph.” As in this photograph, detonating dynamite to extract limestone works like the shutter release of a camera, the moment of capture.

Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0

Details

Accession number
2012.826

In the catalog

PhotographsColour printContemporary art20th centuryJapan

Sources

More by Naoya Hatakeyama

All works
Lime Hills #22916, Naoya Hatakeyama, negative 1988; print 2002

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Lime Hills #29214, Naoya Hatakeyama, negative 1990; print 2002

Lime Hills #29214

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River Series, Naoya Hatakeyama, 1993-94

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Lime Hills #38607, Naoya Hatakeyama, negative 1993; print 2002

Lime Hills #38607

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Maquettes / Light #0426, Naoya Hatakeyama, 1994

Maquettes / Light #0426

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Lime Works #45801, Naoya Hatakeyama, negative 1994; print 2003

Lime Works #45801

negative 1994; print 2003 · Not on view · J. Paul Getty Museum

Maquettes/Light #4913, Naoya Hatakeyama, print 1995; light box produced later

Maquettes/Light #4913

print 1995; light box produced later · Not on view · J. Paul Getty Museum

Maquettes/Light #5806, Naoya Hatakeyama, print 1995; light box produced later

Maquettes/Light #5806

print 1995; light box produced later · Not on view · J. Paul Getty Museum

On view at Art Institute of Chicago

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