YOICHI OKAMOTO
This is the digital home of an ongoing research & exhibition project on the seminal American photographer Yoichi Okamoto.
Photo: Yoichi Okamoto. Erika Hanka, ballet mistress at the Vienna State Opera with dancers, 1952.
Austrian National Library
ABOUT
Yoichi R. Okamoto (1915 – 1985), Japanese-American photographer and artist, served as a U.S. military photographer in Austria and created a visually stunning and historically substantial photographic record of Austrian reconstruction in the aftermath of World War II, including Austria’s resurgent artistic and cultural scene.
He also trained Austrian photographers in the American style of photojournalism.
Subsequently, Yoichi Okamoto revolutionized U.S. presidential photography as the White House Photographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
His professional journey from Syracuse, NY, to Vienna, Austria, and on to The White House is documented through this endeavor and made available to a wider audience.
Yoichi Okamoto, self portrait with mirror.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library
Upcoming Exhibit:
Yoichi Okamoto.
Photographer in the Service of Democracy
LBJ´s Great Society, The Marshall Plan in Postwar Austria, and Central New York
Yoichi Okamoto. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964 in the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library
Exhibition at Art in the Atrium
Syracuse, NY
September 15 – November 15, 2026
presented by
With generous support of:
Okamoto Family
Previous research has been supported by:
Yoichi Okamoto (center) with press photographers of the Syracuse Post Standard, January 1942.
Colgate University Archives, unknown photographer.
Previous Exhibitions
Austrian National Library,
Vienna, Austria
Fine Arts Gallery,
The University of New Orleans
Embassy of Austria
Washington, DC
German-American Heritage Museum
Washington, DC
