Kent Nishimura is a staff photojournalist for the LA Times, based in Washington DC. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in 2003 and started attending UH Mānoa in 2008, which is also when he started working as a photographer at Ka Leo, the school newspaper. A few months later, he landed his first freelance assignment on the White House travel pool for Barack Obama’s first trip to Hawaiʻi after being elected president. He left school two years later to become a freelance photojournalist, full time. Nishimura said his time at UH Mānoa then had a significant impact on him, especially art Instructor Stan Tomita, who has since retired.
“He set me on the path to think critically about creating a body of work and how art can be used to tell stories,” said Nishimura. “I had always seen my fine art photography and journalism in different silos. Stan helped me see that storytelling is not binary. You can use art to tell a story and how both storytelling and art can influence each other.”
Though successful as a freelancer, Nishimura was told by an LA Times editor that he would never get hired without a degree. He returned to UH Mānoa and graduated in 2017 with a BFA in art and art history with a focus in fine art photography. He said he continued to have great instructors along the way, such as Associate Professor Scott Groeniger, and that UH made it possible.
“I had a non-traditional path through college, and the fact that I could drop out of school, essentially, work, pursue a career, and then come back, feeling like I had not missed a beat, really says a lot about the university system,” Nishimura said.
- Excerpt from interview: UH Manoa alum covers January 6 Siege of Capitol Building, Jan. 26, 2021
January 6, 2021, US Capitol Building
Photo credit: Kent Nishimura for LA Times via Getty Images
Instagram: @kentnish
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