Hiroshi Hamaya
[Photographer, b. 1915, Tokyo, Japan, d. 1999, Kanagawa, Japan.]
I like the idea that my work isn’t intended only for the Earth, but for the entire Universe.
The subject I liked best was painting, but the teachers didn't approve of my experiments and sometimes criticized me in front of the whole class. Maybe my love for photography came from that humiliation: a photo is something that you develop and print yourself, in the dark, and that remains in the dark until you decide to show it.
For years my only purpose was to do documentary photos for magazines, without any idea that they were part of a larger project. It was as if I were carried along by a stream—even though I believed that the current was taking me in the right direction.
