Lime Works.

Lime Works. Photographs by Naoya Hatakeyama. Seigensha, 2008. 119 pp., numerous colour illustrations., 10x12".

Naoya Hatakeyama is a renowned Japanese photographer, who "for over a decade, in his 'Lime Works' series and subsequent works, has traced the process through which lime hills are quarried for the substance from which a new urban environment will be built."

The photographs in 'Lime Works' "are of limestone quarries, lime works, and cement factories at some thirty locations scattered around Japan, ranging from Haikkido to Okinawa.

The photographs of factories-sweeping panoramas often made at twilight or dawn-reveal an otherworldly mini-cityscape of oversized tubes and tunnels, all coated with a fine layer of white dust.

This work was made between the years 1986 and 1994 and the first edition, published by Synergy of Tokyo in 1996, quickly went out-of-print.

Amus Arts of Osaka has now reissued this Hatakeyama classic, complete with a new afterword by the artist."


First quote from the International Center of Photography, second quote from the publisher's description.