Yasuhiro Wakabayashi, the Japanese-born American photographer known as Hiro died August 15, 2021, at the age of 90 in his country home in Erwinna, Pennsylvania. Best known for his fashion and still life work, Hiro’s surreal vision of glamour established him among giants of the industry including his mentor Richard Avedon.
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“Hiro is no ordinary man,” Avedon said. “He is one of the few artists in the history of photography. He is able to bring his fear, his isolation, his darkness, his splendid light to film.” Avedon’s words are a testament to Hiro’s extraordinary life, one turned upside down as a child born in Shanghai on November 3, 1930, just one year before Japan invaded Manchuria. One of five children of a Japanese linguist who may have been involved in espionage, Hiro lived a protected life during the better part of World War II, until the battles in the Pacific Theater came to an end.
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After being interned for five months in Peking (now Beijing), the family was repatriated to occupied Japan in 1946. A stranger among his own people, Hiro became intrigued by elements of American pop culture in postwar Japan. While paging through glossy fashion magazines at hotels, Hiro discovered the work of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and soon acquired a camera of his own. In the ruins of imperial Japan, Hiro realized a vision all his own — one that brought the luxurious and quotidian together to create a phantasmagoric spectacle of opulence.
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