Atsushi Hirao

Atsushi Hirao was born in 1987, Nagano, Japan. He studied Geography at Waseda University. After graduated, he photographed people working at the Kitahotaka mountain hut for four years, the highest elevation hut in Japan. His work was awarded Konica Minolta Foto Plemio in 2011, and exhibited at Konica Minolta Plaza in Tokyo. Outside of Japan, he documented a township, so called slum, in Cape Town of South Africa in 2012. In 2013, he moved to New York City to attend the photojournalism and documentary photography program at the International Center of Photography where he received The Wall Street Journal Scholarship for photojournalism.