Born: 3 September 1945, United States
Died: 17 August 2006
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Densho Encyclopedia, in line with the Creative Commons licensing. It was written by Patricia Wakida.
Fine art photographer Masumi Hayashi (1945–2006) was best known for her series of panoramic photo-collages taken at ten of the former sites of World War II American concentration camps. Other series of work include post industrial sites in the Midwest (1986-1991), E.P.A. Superfund Sites (1989–93), Abandoned Prisons (1987–96), War and Military Sites (1990–94), and “CityWorks” (1987–94).
Hayashi was born on September 3, 1945, at the Gila River concentration camp located in Arizona, roughly one month after World War II ended, one of six children of Issei parents Tomio and Sakae Hayashi. After they left Arizona, the family relocated to Watts, a neighborhood located in South Los Angeles, where she worked at her parents’ store, Village Market, on Compton Avenue. She attended and graduated from Jordan High School. She married Charles Keesey in September 1964 and eventually had two children, although the marriage ended in divorce. Hayashi briefly attended the University of California, Los Angeles, before joining her husband, who was in Florida in the navy at that time. She subsequently enrolled at Florida State University in Tallahassee, earning her Bachelor’s degree in 1975 and Master of Fine Arts degree in 1977. She joined the Cleveland State faculty in 1982. In addition to photography, Hayashi was also a printmaker and worked with photo-transfer quilting. She did not return to Gila River, her birthsite, until 1990, and then made a second trip in 1995 during a Gila River reunion of former detainees. She recalls, “That reunion…became a very special experience. I had phoned my mom and uncle and talked to them while I was there…. It was a surprisingly inclusive feeling to be back at the site a second time. This time with a community of Japanese Americans trying to help me identify the sites, sharing their memories both good and bad, and to share a memory with my mother and my uncle of their past.” This second visit to Gila River was the impetus for her beginning a photo project exclusively on the former incarceration sites.
Masumi Hayashi is perhaps best known for creating striking panoramic photo collages assembled from a series of smaller individual images (typically 4-by-6-inch prints) like tiles in a mosaic, that were taken by a camera mounted on a tripod from a single vantage point. Many of these large panoramic pieces consisted of more than a hundred smaller photographic prints and encompass more than 360 degrees of a particular view. Much of her work explored historically and environmentally significant spaces that have been abandoned and left to decay, such as places of confinement and environmental pollution. Later in her career, her artwork reflected a deep interest in sacred sites, and with funding from a Fulbright fellowship, she completed a series on temples and ritual sites in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, India and Nepal.
Hayashi 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 Cleveland State University, she received numerous awards including an Arts Midwest, a National Endowment for the Arts 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. Her photographs have been acquired for numerous public and private collections, including the International Center of Photography (NYC), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Koblenz, Germany. In 2003, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles hosted a retrospective of her photography titled “Sights Unseen: The Photographic Constructions of Masumi Hayashi.”
On August 17, 2006, Hayashi and her neighbor, artist and sculptor John Jackson (who also worked as a maintenance man at the apartment complex) were tragically shot and killed in their apartment building in Cleveland, Ohio, in a dispute with a third neighbor. She was sixty years old when she died.
The following is republished with permission from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University.
HAYASHI, MASUMI (3 September 1945- 17August 2006) was a Japanese-American photographer known for her panoramic collages capturing typically abandoned or isolated landscapes.
Hayashi, the child of Japanese immigrants Tomoi and Sakae, was born in the Gila River War Relocation Center, a [concentration/internment/prison] camp located south of Phoenix in the Gila River Indian Reservation. After the end of World War II, Hayashi and her family moved to southern Los Angeles. Hayashi married Charles Keesey in 1964, with whom she had two children: Dean Hayashi and Lisa Takata. The two would later divorce. Hayashi would earn her BFA from Florida State University in 1975 and her MFA in 1977. She would begin teaching at CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY in 1982, where she would teach until her death in 2006. Outside of her work as a professor, Hayashi built an impressive career and earned widespread international recognition for her work.
Throughout her career, Hayashi used panoramic collages to capture various landscapes across the United States. She focused primarily on abandoned and dilapidated areas of important historical significance, such as abandoned prisons (1987-1996), EPA superfund sites (1989-1993), and other post-industrial landscapes (1986-1991). Although the majority of Hayashi’s work does not feature humans, the presence of humanity pervades throughout her work. Most of the landscapes she captures focus on nature recovering from human intervention. However, Hayashi noted that the beauty of her photographs belies the dangerous reality of the areas; despite their idyllic façade, the subjects of her photographs are still prisons and wastelands.
The unsettling beauty of Hayashi’s work is emphasized as a result of the medium she utilized. Her use of collages creates a timeless quality to her work; rather than capturing a landscape in a single moment in time, Hayashi breaks the landscape apart and separates it from any one specific moment. In the most extreme examples, Hayashi includes older photos and documents in her collages to offer context for the piece within itself. Rather than merely creating hauntingly beautiful landscapes, Hayashi encourages viewers to reflect on the history of a location.
The reflective nature of Hayashi’s work can be clearly seen in her later works. “Japanese-American Internment Camps” comprises of 22 panoramic collages of the ten Japanese-American [internment/concentration] camps during World War II. “Japanese-Canadian Internment Camps” consists of four similar landscape collages. Like Hayashi’s other work, the use of collage brings the collection outside of a specific moment in time. However, she supplements these landscapes with portraits of and interviews with former internees. Her “Family Album Project” contains photos taken within the camps during World War II; accompanying the photographs, Hayashi details their significance as well as the individuals behind and in front of the camera. This work highlights the historical importance of the locations she captured and emphasizes the reflective nature of her photographs.
Following her work on the Japanese American camps, Hayashi would travel abroad and capture religious temples in Asia as a Fulbright Scholar.
Outside of her international and national fame, Hayashi’s work had a profound impact on the Cleveland art scene. Her work in Cleveland includes panoramic landscapes of RTA stations, the CULTURAL GARDENS, as well as PUBLIC SQUARE. As a professor at Cleveland State University Hayashi inspired budding Cleveland artists.
Hayashi’s career came to an abrupt end on August 17, 2006, when she and fellow artist John Jackson were found brutally murdered by a neighbor, Jacob Cifelli, over a noise complaint. Cifelli eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
Hayashi’s legacy remains strong throughout the Cleveland and international art scene. Her work continues to be displayed throughout the world. Her son, Dean Keesey, maintains her website and upholds her legacy by preserving her work.