We asked each photographer in our current show PROOF to explain what the contact sheet reveals about their progress and way of thinking. Here is what Hiroshi Watanabe had to say:

“For me, as a film photographer, contact sheets are a very important step and big part of my creative process. There are two types of photographic artists – ones who create based on his/her visionary ideas and ones who document reality and develops his/her ideas from that reality. I am the latter one. When I photograph, I keep my mind open and photograph what intrigues me. In essence, I merely document them. And mostly, I forget about them. I discover what I photographed in my contacts sheets and I study them. I ponder them. I select what surprises me, teaches me, and stirs my emotions and then make prints. Unlike digital, I cannot see what is exactly on my film until I print the contact sheets. That uncertainty is what drives me to create.” – Hiroshi Watanabe