Seiya Bowen
Nadachi
May 4-28, 2017
“Each summer for over a decade, I returned to my childhood home in Japan. With every visit, the town faded away, slowly being replaced by a new infrastructure of bullet trains and fast-speed freeways.”
In Nadachi, Seiya Bowen examines the socio-economic transformation of rural Japan by focusing his lens on the changes affecting the small town where his grandparents once lived. With increased urban development, many are abandoning Japan’s countryside for economic opportunities available in its metropolitan centers, leaving the older residents behind. Bowen’s quiet color photographs compose an intimate portrait of Nadachi alongside the striking visual evidence of the encroaching transportation systems moving people toward the larger cities. In this way, Bowen skillfully illustrates how these two worlds uncomfortably coexist within the same landscape, while also coming to terms with the personal loss of a particular way of life.
Seiya Bowen is a photographer currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a BFA in 2014 and has since exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues such as SITE Santa Fe and the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado. Bowen’s photography has been featured in Fraction Magazine, PDN, and Aint-Bad, among other publications. This is his first solo exhibition of Nadachi.