Hiro

Born Yasuhiro Wakabayashi in Shanghai to Japanese parents, Hiro spent his early years in China and Japan, before moving to America in 1954. After two entry-level jobs with commercial photographers, he landed an apprenticeship at Richard Avedon’s studio in New York. Avedon immediately recognised Hiro’s talent and introduced him to Harper’s Bazaar’s legendary art director, Alexey Brodovitch. Within a few years Hiro had gained a reputation in the industry and became the only photographer under contract at Harper’s Bazaar, a position he would keep for the next ten years, continuing to take assignments well into his later life.

One of his most celebrated early commercial photographs is a 1963 image of a Harry Winston diamond necklace placed on a bovine hoof, indicative of his tendency to juxtapose the mundane and the exotic. Hiro’s innovative lighting and brilliant use of colour infuse his images with a dreamlike surrealist allure. His talent expanded beyond fashion, taking portraits of The Rolling Stones, documenting the Apollo 11 mission, and photographing a staged cockfight, amongst many other subjects, always with a precise technical mastery.

Throughout his career, Hiro worked with magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Rolling Stone. His work is the subject of three monographs, including Hiro: Photographs, assembled by Richard Avedon. Hiro’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, George Eastman House in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum in LA, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Kobe Fashion Museum in Japan, amongst others. In 2015, his major retrospective, Hiro: Photographs took place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.