Takanobu Hayashi

For this project, I decided to pick a very obscure and more modern photographer from Japan. Takanobu Hayashi was actualy born in Dailan, China in 1946, but his family promptly moved to Japan, eventually arriving in Kyoto. He first became interested in photography during his high school years. After graduating, he worked in the school darkroom for two years until he went to the Tokyo College of Photography. After he graduated, he worked with his photography as a fasion magazine freelancer until he returned as a teacher for the T.C.o.P in 1983. He is still teaching there today.
Takanobu works with black and white photography of nature in an urban environment. That's the only way I can put it. He took pictures of animals in man made structures in his only published book Zoo. This book won the Higashikawa Prize in 1986.

This picture defines what I said about nature in an urban environment. The bird in the river is the nature, and the house in the background is the urban, but there is still the balance between them.

Again with nature in an urban environment. The bushes along the side is the nature, and the road is the urban, but still the good balance, even if it is more on the urban side.

This small pond is from his book Zoo. If you look closely, you can see some animals in the grass near it. While the whole thing looks natural, the small rope barrier adds the urban touch I was talking about earlier.

This picture can take the cake on the weirdness level. It seems to be a person reflected in a broken mirror in front of some large plants. While still weird, it is able to completely represent nature in an urban environment. It still gives the nature vibe with the plants, but the mirror also gives somthing of an urban-nature vibe because it's a mirror, but the cracked glass looks almost like vines of some sort, adding to the weirdness scale, not to mention what the person in the mirror is adding to the weirdness scale.

This is a barren desert, with the crumbling remains of some house or fortification. I really like how the sagebrush in the front looks the same size as the remains, but you know the sagebrush is just closer to you. Still fitting in with the nature in an urban environment.