Japan, Through His Lens, Hiroshi Hamaya

"Hiroshi Hamaya@Horvatland"


Hiroshi Hamaya, born in Tokyo, on the 28th of March in 1915 and deceased in 1999. He was doing freelance photo-journal from 1937. He got two world-wide known publications, one is “Snow Land” which were shot during 1939 to 1954 and were all about the rural life in Niigata prefecture. The other one is “Japan’s Back Coast” which were shot in 12 different prefectures about the life of farmers and fishermen. He was also the first Japanese who worked for Magnum from in 1960.




"Hiroshi Hamaya@Hasselblad Foundation"

I saw one of his reports that his photograph of a headless woman working in the farm was considered ugly at some point. Then couple years later, people changed their point of view of that photo. This report made me had interested in knowing more about his style of photograph. Later on I found out most of his pieces on internet were about Japanese rural life, such as people working in the farm, walking in the snow, landscapes…etc. He also took photos for diverse categories, landscapes, children, women and men. Somehow those pieces about streets were not as popular as those about human beings.




"Hiroshi Hamaya@Hasselblad Foundation"


When I saw this photo that women working in the field, I could feel the strength of it. It seemed so real that those people were like harvesting in front of you and you can feel their busy of doing the job. It’s nothing but a photo somehow it tells a lot through what it was shot. It’s like having conversations with those pictures I saw and made me delightful when I could understand what the photographer wanted them to be seen.






Resources:
-Horvatland http://www.horvatland.com/pages/entrevues/04-hamaya-en_en.htm
-Hasselblad Foundation http://www.hasselbladfoundation.org/hiroshi-hamaya/
-International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/1997/03/01/hamaya.t.php