Taro Yamasaki

is an American photographer who won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography while working for the Detroit Free Press. He is the eldest son of architect Minoru Yamasaki.

Early life Taro Yamasaki was born on December 19, 1945, to Minoru Yamasaki and Teruko Hirashiki in Detroit, Michigan. He is the second of three children. His father, an architect, is best known for designing the World Trade Center; his mother was a pianist who attended the Juilliard School. He attended high school at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. and assistant to fashion photographer William Klein. He then produced a lead story he had written, researched and photographed entirely on his own titled, "Jackson Prison: Armed and dangerous". The story was published on Sunday, December 14, 1980, as lead story of Free Press ' Sunday Comment Front. Yamasaki had "spent 10 days talking to the prison warden, officials, guards and inmates."

Other work In 1983 Yamasaki took a leave of absence from the Free Press to work on a book of architectural photography for Herring Press on notable buildings that were built out of travertine from a quarry near Tivoli. During this year, he began receiving different magazine assignments from different Time Inc. magazines.

Some of the topics his documentary photography work have covered are: Children Victims of the war in Nicaragua Romanian orphans Refugees during the Bosnian War Three cover stories on Ryan White, a thirteen-year-old who had contracted AIDS, considered instrumental on substantially increasing awareness of people living with AIDS. Rwanda (as the first Westerners to enter the country after the Rwandan Civil War in 1995) The lives of children caught in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Outside notorious serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment shortly after he was arrested in 1991.

Personal life Yamasaki's first marriage ended in divorce in 1974. He has one daughter from that marriage. He married his second and current wife, Susan Waderlow, in 1978. Together, they have two boys. He has four grandchildren. Yamasaki resides in Leelanau County, Michigan.