Noriko Hayashi

Noriko Hayashi was born in 1983 and is based in Tokyo. She began photographing for a local newspaper in Gambia while studying international relations at university. Major projects include Unholy Matrimony: Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, Alaka-chuu, and The Prayer of the Yazidis. In 2013 she received the Visa d’Or at Visa pour l’Image in France, the first Japanese photographer to do so. She was selected for the 2015 World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and has received awards from NPPA, Days Japan, the Alexia Foundation, and Amnesty Media.^*1

Hayashi’s themes include underreported social issues, gender-based violence, forced marriage, refugees and migration, religious minorities, and daily life in places rarely represented by mainstream news media. Working within documentary photography and photojournalism, she uses close reporting, captions, and long-term stays in communities to show social practices through individual stories.^*3 In Unholy Matrimony, made over five months in rural Kyrgyzstan in 2012, she photographed the practice of ala kachuu, or bride kidnapping. Although illegal since 1994, the practice continued socially, and Hayashi documented persuasion scenes, family negotiation, and symbols such as the white scarf that marks marriage.^*4 Her background in international relations and early work in Gambia shaped a practice focused on subjects that often fail to enter the international news agenda. The work belongs to a 2000s and 2010s documentary context in which long-form visual storytelling connected human rights issues with personal detail.^*1

The Visa d’Or at Visa pour l’Image, awarded in the prize’s twenty-fifth year, is the strongest marker of Hayashi’s critical recognition. Panos Pictures consistently frames her work around underreported issues and realities. The critical force of her photography lies in showing structures of coercion not through abstract statistics but through particular women, rituals, rooms, gestures, and family negotiations.^*1