Yoshi Shimizu left Japan in 1976, when he was 18, to study hospitality management in Lausanne, Switzerland. Over 40 years later, he now lives about an hour¡¯s drive from Lausanne in Geneva. The intervening years, however, were not spent working in Swiss hotels.
After finishing his studies in Switzerland, Shimizu had an offer to work at a hotel in Canada. He never got to take it though. While getting his English up to speed and applying for a Canadian visa in the U.S., he started a degree in business management in California. From this first detour, came a second, when he decided to sign on to an elective course in photography. Originally he had thought of it as a good way to avoid having to spend time in the classroom: ¡°We only had to turn up once a week for a critique,¡± Shimizu tells me over the phone from Switzerland. Photography, however, soon became more engaging than business studies.
¡°Working in the darkroom was like meditation, just being myself and getting absorbed into the magic of making a print; it was an escape, in a way, from my chaotic life at the time,¡± he says. ¡°I developed a passion for photography and, you know, when you have a passion for something you get better at it.¡±
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.