Hideo Haga (芳賀 日出男 Haga Hideo, 10 September 1921 – 12 November 2022) was a Japanese photographer, known for his photography of traditional Japanese festivals and folk culture.
Biography
Hideo Haga was born in Dalian, Manchuria on 10 September 1921.[1] He took up the camera as a child, encouraged by his father, an engineer whose hobby was photography.
In 1941 he enrolled at Keio University, as a Literature major, where Haga also joined the camera club, often to the neglect of his studies. Lectures by the folkloristShinobu Orikuchi (1887–1953), which he joined when he heard that credits were offered to anybody for attendance, were a strong influence on his future interests.
Haga graduated with a degree in literature in 1944. During the war he was recruited to make aerial photographs for the navy, and in 1946 found employment with the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone company. Retrenched, he returned to live with his father and started to devote himself to photography of traditional culture. Heibonsha publishers issued his first book, on the Japanese rice festival,[2] in 1959.[3] A further thirty-five #books followed.
Haga Library Co., which he established in 1985 markets Haga's over 300 thousand stock photos, made over sixty years, of festivals and folk culture in Japan and other countries.
Haga died on 12 November 2022, at the age of 101.[4]
In 1955 a photograph of a heavily pregnant woman against a blurred street scene by Hideo Haga (Pregnant Japanese Woman Hurrying on Her Way, 1952) was selected, for its (then) unusual public perspective on pregnancy,[5] by Edward Steichen for MoMA’s The Family of Man exhibition which was seen by nine million people as it toured thirty-seven countries.[6]
Haga was the producer for the Festival Plaza at Expo '70 in Osaka.
His book, Folk Customs of Japan - Festivals & Performing Arts, (Creo, 1997, ISBN4877360158) shows his photographs in monochrome of festivals taken throughout Japan since the 1950s.
Books
"Ta no kami: Nihon no inasaku girei = The rituals of rice production in Japan". Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1959. (in Japanese)
"Kamisama-tachi no kisetsu", Kadokawa Shoten, 1964. The seasons of the gods. (in Japanese)
"Japanese folk festivals illustrated by Hideo Haga". Tokyo: Asahi Optical Co., 1970. Reprint, 1983.
"La fiesta: all the world loves a festival", [Japan]: Genkosha, 1989.
Traditional daily lives along the Japanese Archipelago series, Komine Shoten. (in Japanese)ISBN9784338220019, OCLC144100987. 7 volumes chiefly color illustrations.
^Matthews, Sandra; Wexler, Laura (2000), Pregnant pictures, Routledge, pp. 25–26, ISBN978-0-415-90449-0
^Steichen, Edward; Steichen, Edward (1955), Mason, Jerry (ed.), The family of man: the photographic exhibition, Sandburg, Carl (foreword); Norman, Dorothy (writer of added text); Lionni, Leo, (book design); Stoller, Ezra, (photographer), Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster in collaboration with the Maco Magazine Corporation
^Ogawa, Naoyuki (2010). "Haga Hideo shashin-bun "Orikuchi Shinobu to kodai wo tabiyuku"" [Hideo Haga, photograph and text: "Journey through ancient world with Shinobu Orikuchi"]. Kokugakuin Zasshi (in Japanese). 111 (7): 72–75. ISSN0288-2051. OCLC5171965202.
^Haga, Hideo (2017). "Gendaibshashinka shirizu — Haga Hideo no sekai: Orikuchi Shinobu to kodai wo tabiyuku". Will: Monthly (in Japanese) (146): 5–15, 115–119. OCLC6917821528.
Kikuchi, Akira; (菊地, 暁) (December 2004). "距離感 ―民俗写真家・芳賀日出男の軌跡と方法― (Kyorikan — minzoku shashinka Haga Hideo no kiseki to hoho)" [Hideo Haga: an Anthropologist photographer and his sense of distance]. The Zinbun Gakuhō: Journal of Humanities (in Japanese). 91. Kyoto University: 61–96. doi:10.14989/48655.
