Shinobazu Bentendo

Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Photography, College of Art, at Nihon University in 1975. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and became involved in the production of TV commercials, eventually working as a producer and later established his own production company. He received an MBA degree from UCLA Business School in 1993.

In 1995 his passion for photography rekindled, and since then he has traveled worldwide extensively, photographing what he finds intriguing at that moment and place. In 2000 he closed the production company in order to devote himself to the art and became a full time photographer. His work has been published around the world, and he has been exhibited in many galleries across the United States and Japan. He received numerous awards and this work is in the permanent collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, George Eastman House, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art.