Born on November 2nd 1918 in

Tsingtao Qingdao (, also spelled Tsingtao; , Mandarin: ) is a major city in eastern Shandong Province. The city's name in Chinese characters literally means " azure island". Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, it is a major nodal city of the One Belt ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, Sasaki took an in interest in photography after purchasing a Togo camera in 6th grade. He continued to take photos during his military service being stationed at

Pyongyang Pyongyang (, , ) is the capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is known as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 populatio ...

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...

, and

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China, Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 afte ...

before returning to

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

in 1942. He would work as a photojournalist and freelance photographer before meeting Ihei Kimura in 1951 and would later move to Tokyo as his apprentice in 1960. Sasaki was reportedly told, "You'll go bad if you keep photographing bras. Come over to Tokyo." Accepting Kimura's invitation, he left his photo studio to a friend, sold all his camera gear, and bought a

Leica M3 The Leica M3 is a 35 mm rangefinder camera by Ernst Leitz GmbH (now Leica Camera AG), introduced in 1954. It was a new starting point for Leitz, which until then had only produced screw-mount Leica cameras that were incremental improvements to i ...

. As a photojournalist he covered social issues including heroin addiction, gradeschool dropouts, and prostitution. He began publishing regularly on

Asahi Camera was a Japanese monthly photographic magazine, published from April 1926 until July 2020, when it was discontinued due to declining circulation. History and profile The first issue was that for April 1926.During the twentieth century, Japanese mon ...

in 1966, renowned for his macro work on flowers, insects, and small animals. 256 of his photos were published on the magazine across 23 years with his specialty being newborn life and the process of

metamorphosis Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some inse ...

References

Japanese photographers 1918 births 2009 deaths {{Japan-photographer-stub