Book of the Week

Fifty Years of Photography 1930-1981
by Hiroshi Hamaya

Born in 1915, Hiroshi Hamaya began his career studying aerial photography and started his Yukiguni (Snow Land) series, which focused on farming practices and daily life in the remote mountains of Niigata prefecture, in 1940, then followed it with his Ura Nihon (Japan’s Back Coast) series in 1954. His work was included in Edward Steichen’s 1955 “Family of Man” exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Hamaya later became the first Japanese photographer to work for Magnum, in 1960. After covering the demonstration against the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, he returned to aerial and landscape photography, personally adopting an anti-government stance. Magnum presents a selection of his wide-ranging body of work.

Taking pictures is like fishing or writing. It's getting out of the unknown that which resists and refuses to come to light.

Jean Gaumy