Hajime Sawatari, Nagisa Hotel
by Xavier Encinas
Sawatari started publishing his photographs in photography magazines while he was enrolled in Nihon University’s Department of Photography, College of Art.
He then took up a job as photographer at Nippon Design Center, Inc., an advertising and design company. Sawatari left the company in 1966 and since then works as a freelance photographer.
Sawatari has received the Japan Advertising Photographers’ Association Award (consolation prize, 1963), the Photographic Society of Japan Annual Award (1973) and the Kodansha Publishing Culture Award in Photography (1979).
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Niigata City Art Museum, and Kawasaki City Museum include Sawatari’s photographs in their permanent collections.
"I took these photographs around 1963 and 1964 at Nagisa Hotel in Zushi, Nagisa Hotel in Shinagawa, and Chigasaki Beach. The subject was my girlfriend, her initials Y.O. Back then I worked at a design firm in Ginza, Tokyo, and I photographed them in seven or eight sessions we had on my days off."
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