Background
Yoichi Robert Okamoto was born on July 5, 1915, in Yonkers, New York, United States.
Yoichi Okamoto
1962
Okamoto photographing himself in the mirror at the L.B.J. Ranch in Stonewall
Colgate University
1964
1968
1969
Yoichi Robert Okamoto was born on July 5, 1915, in Yonkers, New York, United States.
Yoichi Okamoto spent three years in Japan as a child. He attended Roosevelt High School and Colgate University and served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
During part of the time during World War II, he was the official photographer of General Mark Clark. After the war, he joined the United State Information Agency.
In 1955 curator Edward Steichen chose Okamoto's the United States Information Service photograph of Harald Kreutzberg for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man that was seen by 9 million visitors. His tightly cropped, three-quarter-face portrait, previously published in Popular Photography shows Kreutzberg at the 1950 Salzburg Festival in rehearsals for the performance of the play Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in which Kreutzberg played the devil.
In 1961, Yoichi Okamoto was invited to accompany then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on a trip to Berlin as his official photographer. Admiring the photography from the trip, the Vice President requested that Yoichi Okamoto be used for future events. When Johnson became President, he asked Yoichi Okamoto to become the official photographer for the White House, which he accepted on the condition that he would have unlimited access to the President. He was fondly known as "Oke", and was given unprecedented access to the Oval Office. He captured images of the President of the United States, more candid than had been previously accepted.
Because of his ability to be present at almost any event, more photos of the Johnson presidency are available than from any earlier term of office. Yoichi Okamoto took an estimated 675,000 photographs during the Johnson presidency. The 1990 coffee table book LBJ: The White House Years by Harry Middleton consists primarily of images taken by Okamoto.
After finishing as the White House official photographer, Yoichi Okamoto opened a private photofinishing business called Image Inc. in Washington D.C. He worked alongside his wife, Paula Okamoto.
Yoichi Okamoto committed suicide on April 24, 1985, at the age of 69.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger, and West Berlin Mayor Willi Brandt during the President's tour of Germany
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson meeting in the Oval Office
President Lyndon B. Johnson working in the Oval Office
President Lyndon Johnson with Senator Richard Russell
President Lyndon B. Johnson in Amphicar
Martin Luther King Jr & Lyndon Johnson
President Lyndon Johnson & Lady Bird
President Lyndon Johnson Color
1969Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Portrait
1964Lyndon Johnson w/ General Westmoreland
1968
Yoichi Okamoto was married to wife, Paula, and had a step-daughter, Karin, and a son, Philip.
