Hiroshi Hamaya - American America - 1971

“American America”

Hiroshi Hamaya
Kawade Shobo Shinsha/1971/Japanese/255*270*30

“American America” is a collection of photographs by Japan's world-renowned photographer, Hiroshi Hamaya. Throughout the prewar and postwar periods, Hiroshi Hamaya was a news photographer and documentary photographer who continued to photograph people living in rural areas of Japan, and produced a number of significant photographs that sounded alarm bells about the problems of those areas. In particular, “Snow Country (1956)” and “Japan Behind the Scenes (1957),” which captured people living in harsh living and working conditions on the Sea of Japan coast, are regarded as masterpieces that will remain in the history of Japanese photography. This book is a collection of photographs taken in the U.S., which is unique for Hamatani, who has been shooting domestic works, as he was invited by the Japan Society in New York on a fellowship in 1967 and traveled by car throughout the U.S., abandoning his professionalism as a photographer. The book is composed of photographs taken while traveling throughout the United States by car, abandoning his professionalism as a photographer. This is an American documentary by Hiroshi Hamaya, edited under the title “A Study of the Contact Point between Nature and Mankind” through his mind-boggling journey across the land of America.