Michael Yamashita

rdf:langString Michael Yamashita

rdf:langString Michael Yamashita is an American photographer known for his work in National Geographic, as well as his many iconic photographs and exhibitions. Born in 1949 in San Francisco, California, and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. Yamashita graduated from Montclair Academy in 1967. He graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in Asian studies, and after college in 1971, he traveled to Japan to teach English. After joining a photo club to work on his Japanese, he was inspired to pursue photography professionally. After living and shooting throughout Asia for seven years, he returned to the US where he started working for the National Geographic in 1979. Since then, he has traveled and photographed places as diverse as Somalia, Sudan, England, Ireland, and Papua New Guinea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, with special concentration on Asia, including Japan, China and Tibet. He has published sixteen photographic books, including Shangri-La [along the tea road to lhasa], Zheng He: Tracing the Epic Voyages of China’s Greatest Explorer, Japan: The Soul of a Nation, Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey. Yamashita also produced and appeared in two documentaries inspired by his books on Marco Polo and Zheng He. He has won numerous awards, including those from the National Press Photographers Association and the Asian American Journalists Association, and his pictures have been shown at the Perpignan and La Gacilly Photo Festivals, the Carter Center in Atlanta, the National Gallery of Art, and the LA County Museum of Art. He is also a frequent lecturer, including with TedX, teaches and conducts photo workshops across Asia and the United States. He is a China ambassador for Sony Cameras and is known as a Sony Shooter. He has amassed over 1.5 million followers on Instagram. Yamashita's most recent venture involves the production and sale of NFTs, which are digital representations of art whose ownership is verified by a blockchain. His first foray into this crypto world was on July 7, 2021 on the Origin Protocol platform and raised $34,000. His second collection, The Four Seasons of Juizhaigou is listed on the NFT marketplace Open Sea and generated 20.85 Ether of sales in seven days. He lives and works in Chester Township, New Jersey, with his wife and frequent collaborator, Elizabeth Bibb, where he also serves as a volunteer fireman .