Yasuhiro Wakabayashi, the Japanese American photographer known as Hiro, whose fashion and still-life images captured a relentlessly inventive vision of American life, died on Sunday at his country home in Erwinna, Pa. He was 90.
He was among the very greats of fashion photography, first making a name for himself in the ’60s with his surreal fashion and still life imagery after apprenticing for Richard Avedon, who referred him to Harper’s Bazaar where Hiro would work for years.
Hiro had a close working relationship with Elsa Peretti and shot most of her jewelry designs for Tiffany & Co and counted Halston was one of his biggest supporters. Some of his most famous images include a portrait of a four-sided Balenciaga dress, an Apollo space flight, a perfume ad of Jerry Hall exhaling smoke and a close-up shot of a foot landing on stones and an octopus.
