A Woman to Know: Tsuneko Sasamoto
You need to push yourself and stay aware, so that you can move forward. — Tsuneko
Tsuneko's frames are famous.
She photographed the dome in Hiroshima, the one that stood standing even after the atomic blast. She won awards for images that covered newspaper fronts throughout Japan. She photographed politicians, artists and the Imperial Family.
But Tsuneko also shot seven decades of Japanese women on her own time, separate from her journalism and her other official portrait assignments. On these personal studies she'd photograph housewives, nightclub singers, nurses and mothers. All the women society had forgot — she remembered them in her photographs.
Add to your reading list:
A History of Women Photographers (Naomi Rosenblum)
Suffragettes to She-Devils: Women's Liberation and Beyond (Liz McQuiston)
Read more:
100 Years, 100 Women (Lucy Birmingham)
Pioneer Photojournalist Blazed Trails for Women (The Japan Times)
Meet Japan's First Female Photojournalist (Mental Floss)
Japan's First Female Photojournalist is Still Shooting at the Age of 101 (PetaPixels)
See more:
Tsuneko Sasamoto (Bored Panda)
100 Years of Japan's First Female Photojournalist (Tokyo Art Beat)
Watch more:
Tsuneko promoting her book in 1997 (YouTube)
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Thank you to Gene Park for recommending Tsuneko as a woman to know! You can find him on Twitter, where he is v v v funny and insightful <3