Tsuneko Sasamoto | |
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Born | |
Died | 15 August 2022 | (aged 107)
Occupation(s) | Photojournalist, photographer |
Known for | Japan's first female photojournalist |
Honours | Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement |
Tsuneko Sasamoto (笹本 恒子, Sasamoto Tsuneko, 1 September 1914 – 15 August 2022) was Japan's first female photojournalist.[1]
Sasamoto was born in Tokyo, Japan. She went to a college of home economics, but quit because of her ambition to become a painter. After dropping out, she attended an institute of painting without telling her parents, and a dressmaking school.[2]
Sasamoto started her career as a part-time illustrator on the local news pages in Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun (now Mainichi Shimbun, one of the newspapers in Japan). At 26, she got promoted to a probationary employee in 1940 when she joined the Photographic Society in Japan, officially becoming the first female photojournalist in Japan. She stated that Margaret Bourke-White was a major influence in why she became a photographer.[3] Sasamoto photographed subjects from General Douglas MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan to striking coalminers and protesting students.[4]
She published a photo book in 2011 called Hyakusai no Finder, or Centenarian’s Finder.[4] In 2014, Sasamoto had an exhibit of her work from her 2011 book called Hyakusai Ten, or, Centenarian’s Exhibition.[4] In 2015, Sasamoto published another book, Inquisitive Girl at 101.[3] She broke her left hand and both legs in 2015 but continued to photograph. Prior to her death, Sasamoto was working on a project called Hana Akari (Flower Glow) in honor of her friends who had died.[5]
Sasamoto turned 100 in September 2014,[6] and died of natural causes on 15 August 2022, at the age of 107.[7]
2016: Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement[8]
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