School of Fine Arts. Yamazawa's father died soon after she arrived and as a result, Yamazawa was forced to seek out part-time work to pay for school tuition and living expenses. Through a serendipitous introduction by a local camera shop owner, Yamazawa began working as an apprentice to Consuelo Kanaga who was then primarily a portrait photographer in San Francisco. In 1927, Kanaga closed her studio to tour Europe and Yamazawa took on work as a photography assistant to an unidentified amateur photographer. After completing her studies at California SFA in December 1927, Yamazawa travelled to Europe in the spring of 1928. When Yamazawa came back to the US, she visited Kanaga in New York City and found a retouching job with Nikolas Murray, a photographer for Harpers Bazaar. Commercial photography career Pre-war Yamazawa returned to Osaka in 1929 and she started to work professionally as a photographer with a graflex camera and other equipment gifted from Kanaga. Yamazawa's embracement of photography was in part motivated by a need to financially support her mother after the death of her father as well as her growing view of photography as an art form, informed by her experiences in the US. n 1931, Yamazawa opened her own photography studio at the Dojima Building in Osaka's business district where she shot mostly portraits. Yamazawa initial portraits were of members of the social club Seikosha, which included Osaka's financial community. She was then invited to move to the Osaka Sogo Department in Shinsaibaishi and relocation in 1935. She become known as a shokugyo-fujin “professional woman” and penned essays in the journal Kagayaku published by Shigure Hasegawa as well as Fujin Gahou. As Yamazawa's reputation grew, she began photographing the artistic community, including playwright Shigure Hasegawa and actress Yasue Yamamoto. Yamazawa often visited workshops Yamamoto participated in as part of the Shin-Tsukiji Theatre Company as well as the workshops Yamamoto held in her Sendagaya home. During the war During the war, Yamazawa followed Yamamoto to Shinsu (present day Kohigashi, Chino) in Nagano with her photography assistant Kazuko Hamachi. Although many of the images Yamazawa took before and during the war were lost in a studio fire (caused by an air strike), the images of Yamamoto taken in Shinsu are preserved in the book Yamamoto Yasue Butai Shashinshu (1960). At the time, Yamazawa borrowed an unused tofu mill and repurposed it into a studio, waiting until