Oldschool Beauty of Japan and Peek Through History With Veteran AP Photographer Eugene Hoshiko

In this July 3, 2015 photo, Kimie Mihara, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing, looks at the Atomic Bomb Dome, as it is known today in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture, southern Japan. Built in 1915, the dome building was a rare example of Western architecture in Hiroshima at the time. Czech architect Jan Letzel designed it to be a city landmark and an exhibition hall for industrial and cultural promotion. Mihara was a worker at a government office in the dome building in 1945. AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko

There’s not much to learn about Eugene Hoshiko on the web. No interviews, no bios, just decades worth of photojournalism. On the other hand, the pictures themselves speak plenty.

Hoshiko earned Bachelor’s in journalism at the Oregon State University in 1989. In 1994 he joined the Associated Press in Mexico. He stayed in Latin America until 1998, when he transferred to Shanghai. Finally, in 2014, he ended up in Tokyo.

Here you can peak through time at Hoshiko’s career with an obvious emphasis on his recent days in Japan.

Browsing through the photos, you may have noticed an interesting trait. It is the center composition. Hoshiko places his subject in the middle of the frame quite often and in many instances succeeds tremendously.

That seems to be way more unusual than one may think. One of the first lessons about photography is the rule of thirds, that is imagining the frame cut into thirds and placing your subject at one of the dividing lines between them. The rule can quickly become a second nature and one may suddenly realize that a vast majority of one’s pictures follows the rule.

Yet many times there’s a better option and the center composition can be incredibly powerful, offering stability, impact, and, if the circumstances allow, symmetry. Generally speaking, any situation that lends itself to symmetry, lends itself to center composition too. But one needs to keep an eye out for such opportunities. Hoshiko seems to be quite adept at that.

Besides that, you may notice some highlights from Hoshiko’s time in China—a protest against environmental pollution, the bird flu outbreak of 2004, and SARS epidemic of 2003.