Masumi Hayashi (photographer)

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Masumi Hayashi (September 3, 1945 - August 17, 2006) was a celebrated photographer and artist who taught art at Cleveland State University, in Cleveland, Ohio, for 24 years. She won a Cleveland Arts Prize, three Ohio Arts Council awards, a Fulbright fellowship; awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, and Florida Arts Council; as well as a 1997 Civil Liberties Educational Fund research grant.

Masumi's works are represented in numerous public collections, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Ludwig Art Museum in Koblenz, Germany.

[edit] Biography

Masumi Hayashi was born in 1945 in the Gila River War Relocation Camp in Rivers, Arizona, one of the United States government's War Relocation Authority camps, where Japanese-Americans were placed in internment during the World War II Era. The Gila River camp was located on Indian reservation land.

Masumi grew up in Watts (an area in Los Angeles, California) and graduated from Jordan High School. As an adolescent, she worked at her parents’ store, Village Market, on Compton Avenue. She attended UCLA and later went on to attend Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in 1975 and Arts Degree in 1977.

Masumi joined the faculty of Cleveland State University as Assistant Professor of Photography in 1982, and became a full professor in 1996. During her tenure at CSU, Masumi received numerous awards, including an Arts Midwest, NEA fellowship in 1987, a Civil Liberties Educational Fund research fellowship in 1997, a Fulbright Grant in 2003, and Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council on three different occasions. She was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for Visual Arts in 1994.

Masumi Hayashi is perhaps best known for creating striking panoramic photocollages, using smaller color photographs (typically 4-by-6-inch prints) like tiles in a mosaic. Many of these large panoramic pieces involve more than one hundred smaller photographic prints; the rotational scope of the assembled collage can be an encompassing 360 degrees or even 540 degrees. Much of her work explores socially uncomfortable spaces, including prisons, relocation camps, and Superfund cleanup sites.

Later in her career, her artwork reflected a deep interest in sacred sites, and she travelled several times to India and other places in Asia, to photograph spiritually significant spaces.

Masumi Hayashi was killed by gunshot in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 17, 2006, apparently by a neighbor.

[edit] References

http://www.csuohio.edu/art_photos/gallery.html

http://www.masumimuseum.com/index.html

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/080103/20030801_masumi.html

http://www.ludwigmuseum.org/ausstellung/rueckschau_02/hayashi.htm

G. Baird and D.G. Guevara, "Accomplished artists mourned: Complaint about neighbor's loud music ends in double slaying." Cleveland Plain Dealer, Saturday, August 19, 2006. http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1155976256263150.xml&coll=2

Arthur Hansen, "Gila River Relocation Center" in Rick Noguchi, ed. Transforming Barbed Wire: The incarceration of Japanese Americans in Arizona during World War II (Phoenix, AZ: Arizona Humanities Council, 1997) 7-9.