EXHIBITIONS
Jamie Hawkesworth “Preston Bus Station”
Dates: Aug 2 – 31, 2019 [Summer holidays: Aug 11 – 19]
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
Opening reception: Friday, Aug 2, 18:00 – 20:00
Signing event: Saturday, Aug 3, 15:00－17:00
Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film is pleased to present “Preston Bus Station,” an exhibition of works by Jamie Hawkesworth from Aug 2 to Aug 31. The exhibition, which will be his first in Japan, presents 139 photographs from the series “Preston Bus Station,” in which he shot young people coming and going inside a brutalist bus station. The series was his first and became the foundation of his practice.
Preston Bus Station was the first place where I really looked at light. The huge bus station windows literally showed me how light moved and changed throughout the day. I began to see, feel and understand its effect, I was becoming sensitive to light. Being patient in such a transitional space began to amplify every detail. Everything became significant. In the continuous motion of people’s days, light became a magnifying glass—a tool to study and appreciate life. A cold circular space became heaven.
Jamie Hawkesworth, July 2019
Hawkesworth began shooting while at university. In 2011, he spent two days inside the Preston Bus Terminal, located in northern England, with his then photography teacher Adam Murray, and shot portraits of teenagers in the terminal. Several years later, having heard that the terminal was slated for demolition (the demolition was later revoked), Hawkesworth returned to his photographic origin, spending a month shooting in the terminal. He walked around the terminal daily from 8AM to 8PM, shooting the diverse group of people who gathered and passed through it. First exhibited as a site-specific work and later published as a book Preston Bus Station in 2007, the photographs, which are of people he was intuitively drawn to, evince his sincerity and respect for the subjects’ individualities as well as his unique sensitivity to light and color. To recreate the movement of the photographer, who shot portraits as he walked inside the terminal composed of a series of circular forms, the photographs will be displayed in a circle within the gallery. Hawkesworth’s method of accepting what occurs in front of his eyes and paying attention to his response to those events consistently gives his works a strong grounding in reality.
There will be a signing event of the exhibition poster.
【Signing event by Jamie Hawkesworth】
Date and time: Saturday, Aug 3, 15:00－17:00
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film
5-17-1 2F Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0032 Japan
Tel: 81-3-5575-5004
Jamie Hawkesworth was born 1987 in Suffolk, England. He initially majored in forensic science at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, but was introduced to photography through a class on crime scene documentation, changed majors, and graduated in 2009 with a degree in photography. After working as an assistant to a documentary photographer, he met Benjamin Bruno, a fashion stylist, and began working a as a fashion photographer. In addition to shooting campaign photos for J.W. Anderson since its Autumn/Winter 2013-2014 collection, he has shot for Loewe, which Anderson became creative director of in 2013, Alexander McQueen, miu miu and numerous other fashion houses. Primarily shooting editorials and promotional photographs for fashion brands, Hawkesworth produces unique and timeless work. He has received acclaim as one of the representative photographers of his generation. His solo exhibitions include; “A Short Pleasurable Journey Part Two” in Clearkenwell, London (2019); “Landscape with Tree”, Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2017); “A Short Pleasurable Journey”, Red Hook Labs, New York (2016).
