About

Takaaki Iwabu has worked in the United States as a photojournalist for the past 16 years. A native of Yokohama, Japan, he graduated from Nihon University in 1991 with a degree in International Relations. He moved to the United States in the same year.

In 1994, after earning a Masters Degree in Journalism from Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., he was hired by Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, N.Y. His first solo exhibition "Niagara Neighbors" (1997) was featured at Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University in Niagara Falls. Iwabu then went to work for The State in Columbia, S.C., where he was twice named South Carolina Newspaper Photographer of the Year (1999 and 2002). He joined the staff of The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. in 2004.

Iwabu has won more than 50 photography awards, including a Silver Award from Society of Newspaper Design (2004) and a National Award in Photography from the Asian American Journalists Association (2006). Most recently, his multimedia piece received recognition from Southern Short Course in News Photograpy (2009). His work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated and LIFE: The Year in Pictures.

Iwabu was a media fellow with Duke University's Deweitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy (Fall, 2010). He lives in Raleigh with his wife and two daughters.

(Photograph by Shawn Rocco)