Born in 1958 in Iwate, Japan, Naoya Hatakeyama graduated from The University of Tsukuba's School of Art and Design in 1981. Hatakeyama has been the recipient of a number of photography prizes and in 2001 was one of three artists to represent Japan in the 49th Venice Biennale of Art. He has exhibited widely in Japan and abroad and is represented by the gallery L.A. Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan

The works Blast 5416 made in 1998 and Blast 4622 made in 1997, form part of a series of works that Hatakeyama took in the 1990s of detonations in limestone quarries. In making these works, Hatakeyama's work is seen to test the physicality of what it is possible for a still camera to record - a striking sense of dangerous close proximity that the human eye could never safely witness.