Photographer Yuri Hasegawa leaves Tokyo for Los Angeles. The former professional dancer and choreographer has found in the photographic medium a new creative bias to create. From Hillary Clinton to Billie Ellish to portraits of her favorite animals, dogs, Yuri Hasegawa is in constant search of an exceptional person or moment to photograph.
When did photography come to you as the perfect medium to create?

My first love was dancing. I have been a professional dancer and choreographer. However, I also always had a camera in my hands. It felt like photography touches a different side of me. When I left Japan for the United States, I discovered that I could take classes at low cost. I never thought I could stop dancing altogether. However, after returning to the United States, I studied photography for 3 years. And I’ve never looked back since.How would you describe your photographic sensitivity?

I am influenced by graphics, slight humor and wabi-sabi, this traditional Japanese aesthetic that runs in my blood and which links two principles: wabi (solitude, simplicity, nature, dissymmetry, melancholy) and sabi (weathering by time, the patina of objects, the taste for old things…)What do you like the most to photograph ?

I like to portray the environments in which my subjects evolve. As soon as I enter one of these spaces, I am like a child in a candy store. Also, as an animal lover, their presence in the picture is a new source of excitement. I love to testify about their connection with their family members. For me, the creative process is much more fascinating than the result. I like to testify to “when the magic happens”. Like in my personal project “Artist Series”, here I just look at the artist’s brushstroke and went into pure meditation.

How do you like to work with your models?

The context I create around the photoshoot varies depending on the subjects, their mood, the time I spend with them and other factors. I think above all that it all depends on the “atmosphere” and the way we listen to each other with the models. The portrait session consists of exchanging energies; that of space and people. No matter the chemistry, energy or even tension, every session will never be the same.