Hiro

Hiro, Chinese photographer

Hiro is the pseudonym of Yasuhiro Wakabayashi (1930). A Chinese photographer, born in Shanghai. In 1946 he moved to Japan with his family. He studied in Tokyo. In 1954 he moved to New York where he studied photography at the School of Modern Photography.

After a series of apprenticeships with several photographers, he became the assistant to Richard Avedon. In 1956 he attended the courses of Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research of New York.

From 1958 he started to work for several magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, with which he collaborated exclusively from 1966 to 1974. After sharing a studio with Avedon for a long time, he finally opened his own in 1971. In 1969 the American Society of Magazine Photographers nominated him as Photographer of the Year.

Hiro’s photos are characterized by strong visual impact, typical of an advertising approach with very bright colors and close-ups.

Hiro died on the 15th of August 2021, at 90 years old in his house in Erwinna.

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