Zero

Artist Hiroshi Watanabe American, born Japan, 1951

Date2013

MediumDigital chromogenic print

Dimensions11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LineGift of Daylight Books

Object number2015.14.14

On View

Not on view

Label TextWatanabe’s ethereal black and white photographs transform the baseball field and its individual elements—a net, a scoreboard, a baseball—into abstract and not immediately recognizable images. Describing his process in the darkroom, he says, “You’re totally isolated from the outside world, and you just focus on one thing: creating images. That's my religion, more or less.”

Watanabe found a similar experience at the ballpark: “I noticed how the scoreboard changes, so I just felt that there must be someone who's doing that work, who nobody sees. Among all this crowd, there's one space that's one person sitting there, waiting for a time to change numbers … working by himself.”
[L. Dougherty, "Bull City Summer," 2014]
ProvenanceCreated Durham, NC, 2013; collection of the artist; Daylight Books, Hillsborough, NC; given to NCMA, 2015.Published ReferencesSam Stephenson, ed., Bull City Summer (Hillsborough, NC: Daylight Books, 2014), illus. (color) (different print). Object Rights Statement

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