Literature

Biography:

Takashi Hamaguchi (b. 1931) embarked on his career as a freelance photojournalist in 1956, at the peak of photojournalism’s popularity and influence in Japan. Hamaguchi found himself at the forefront of documenting the escalating tensions and civil unrest which characterised the 1960s in Japan. As displays of popular dissent became a daily fixture of international news coverage, Hamaguchi’s bold and dispassionate account of the times was broadcast across mainstream media channels and passed through more subversive political circles.

Hamaguchi’s work recording the student movement, fierce anti-American protests, and the bitter campaign against the construction of Narita airport is celebrated for its intensely human perspective. Hamaguchi incorporated elements of humour and details of the living conditions of participants within his version of events, refusing to reduce participants to the sum of their political identities. Instead of photographing incidents from a partisan standpoint, Hamaguchi remained open-minded, conscientiously committed to capturing situations without bias, so that his audience could make up their own minds: ‘I was driven to shoot simply by a sense of mission, which told me that I had to document and disseminate the situation.’

Today, Hamaguchi’s work is held in the collections of the Yokohama Museum of Art, the China Art Museum, Shanghai, and the Romanian National Gallery of Art. His major awards include the All-Japan Mainichi Photography Exhibition Prime Minister’s Award (1964).