Yoichi Okamoto
and the American Century

The exhibition will be on view at the Embassy until August 22, 2024. Viewing hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays (except holidays) between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. Registration is required via email to washington-id@bmeia.gv.at.

Yoichi Okamoto served as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s official White House photographer from 1964 to 1968. Considered a trailblazer of his craft, he was first to gain unlimited access to the President as condition of his employment. This kind of access was unprecedented and allowed him to capture intimate and candid moments in history, resulting in never-before seen photographs.

During his tenure at The White House, Okamoto took some 375,000 photos documenting President Johnson and his administration, which is considered today as the best-documented visual presidency in U.S. history. According to historian Greg Robinson, “his powerful portraits show the president in a variety of moods, and reveal the burden of the office on the man, especially during the Vietnam War. They go beyond political propaganda and shine as both art and history.”

Before coming to The White House, Okamoto served as head of the Pictorial Division of the U.S. Information Agency in Vienna, Austria from 1946 until 1954, producing a massive pictorial record not only of the the country’s reconstruction after World War II, but of Austrian life at large. This includes intimate documentation of Vienna’s post-war cultural life. Okamoto was honored by he Austrian Photographic Society for his “Contributions to the Advancement of Photography” in Austria.

This exhibition explores the history documented by Okamoto in his masterful photographs s from his arrival in Europe to his work at The White House and celebrates the art he created in the process.

This exhibition is produced in cooperation with the Austrian National Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and with generous support from the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.

The exhibition was opened on March 4, 2024, in the presence of the guests of honor, Linda Bird Johnson-Robb, daughter of President Johnson, and her husband, former U.S. Senator and Governor of Virginia, Chuck Robb.

It was accompanied by an academic panel, held on March 6, 2024. In addition, the exhibition was also on view at the University of New Orleans Fine Arts Gallery, where it opened on March 14, 2024, produced in cooperation with the Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies.