NFT Overview

Taro Yamasaki is a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist. His portfolio includes human interest assignments for newspapers, national magazines and nonprofit journals in 48 states and countries around the world. He began his career as a staff photographer for the Detroit Free Press in 1977.

Yamasaki decided early on to make a difference through journalism, believing prejudice was at the root of many problems and effective storytelling could help dispel that prejudice.

From 1984 to 2005 Yamasaki worked for several national magazines but primarily for People magazine, whose weekly readership ranged from 30 to 37 million viewers per issue. He travelled the country and world telling stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things amid war, frightening disease, and social discord caused by racial, sexual and class discrimination.

Since 2005 Yamasaki has been working on a number of pro-bono projects primarily about human trafficking, undocumented workers and migrant farm workers while continuing to tell stories of children impacted by war and environmental disaster.

Even the most traumatic stories Yamasaki has covered contain moments of hope. Time and time again he has seen the power of a single photograph open hearts and minds and motivate action before thought gets in the way.

In June of 1969, Yamasaki took a summer break from his job as an assistant kindergarten teacher on New York's Lower East Side. He received an opportunity to photograph migrant farmworkers in orchards and their camps from a friend who was a Vista volunteer in the fruit growing region of Western New York.

Believing an in-depth story about these farmworkers could launch his career in photojournalism, Yamasaki traveled to Wayne County, New York with a beat-up camera and one lens. His only plan was to become comfortable with the workers, so his photos would capture their personalities and humanity. He wanted his photographs to evoke empathy, inspiring the viewer to see migrant farmworkers as "neighbors or relatives," not "others."

Yamasaki quickly learned of the exploitative migrant farmworker cycle. Workers were lured north from their central Florida homes by the relatively high wages to pick fruit. But the ride, often on a crowded school bus driven by the crew boss, was expensive, causing them to incur debt. There was a period without work between cherry and apple seasons, causing workers to accumulate more debt just for food and living expenses. The return trip to Florida further increased their debt, making a return to New York the following year inevitable.

After studying his summer's photography, Yamasaki knew that photojournalism was his true calling. His approach of communicating his subjects' universal humanity became the model for his career.

In order for democracy to flourish, the public must be educated. Journalism, in all its forms whether written, videotaped or photographed, must strive for objective truths that are essential to understand and ultimately solve the complex problems that challenge us all daily. Taro Yamasaki's work is a testament to the power of photojournalism.

Artwork: Taro Yamasaki