American Japanese
Yasuhiro Ishimoto's work embodies a unique mixture of Japanese, American, and European influences. Born to Japanese parents in San Francisco in 1921, he has worked as a Japanese citizen since 1961, using a number of traditional Japanese themes. As further proof of his impeccable Japanese credentials, he was included in the canonical Photography and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 19531995 exhibition curated by Masuda Rei at the National Museum of Modern Art, and he was named a Man of Cultural Distinction by the Japanese government in 1997. This belated identification of his work as a part of the modern Japanese photographic tradition has overshadowed the pivotal influence of the Bauhaus in his photographic education and obscured the importance of the formative years that he spent in the United States.
Although born in the United States, Ishimoto returned to Japan at age three with his parents to begin his schooling. Being born in the United States granted him automatic citizenship, and in 1939, when he graduated from high school, he returned to the United States to go to college. He began studies in agriculture at the University of California, but in 1942 his plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Despite being a citizen, he was interned in Armach, Colorado with other Japanese Americans. Although this forcible confinement could have been traumatic, he claims that, as a young man, he was easily able to endure the fieldwork, and the enforced break in his college studies gave him time for contemplation that he would otherwise have lacked.
At the end of the war, Ishimoto began studies in architecture at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Soon, however, after reading Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's Vision in Motion, he transferred to the celebrated photography program at Chicago's Institute of Design. This program had been founded in 1937 by Moholy-Nagy as The New Bauhaus, and, by his death in 1946, it had incorporated many of the same tenets of design faith that the original Bauhaus in Dessau had espoused. Although he was under the tutorship of the inspirational Harry Callahan and supervised by Aaron Siskind, Ishimoto soon developed his own method of working and won the Moholy-Nagy Prize in 1951 and then again in 1952.
After graduating from the Institute of Design in 1952, Ishimoto returned to Japan. His big break came shortly thereafter, when one of his photographs was selected to be part of the monumental 1955 The Family of Man exhibition being put together by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The picture, of a young girl loosely tied to a tree in a game of hide-and-seek, captures an exhilarating childhood moment in which the adult gaze of the audience gets caught between constraint and play, sexuality and innocence. The world tour of Family of Man brought his work to a global audience and provided him with the opportunity to publish a 1958 collection of his work in Japan as Aru Hi Aru Tokoro (Someday Somewhere).
Shortly after the Family of Man exhibition, in 1956, Ishimoto married Shigeru, to whom he remains married. The couple returned to Chicago in 1958, living there until 1961 when they moved to Japan, where Ishimoto applied for and received citizenship. While in Chicago, however, Ishimoto had put together two series of pictures that illustrate the three major influences on his work: the city life of Chicago, traditional Japanese art, and the principles of the New Bauhaus.
In the years after his book Aru Hi Aru Tokoro won the 1958 New Talent Prize of the Japanese Photography Critics' Association, he compiled two other books: Chicago, Chicago, a lyrical portrayal of life in Chicago at the end of the 1950s, and Katsura, an architectural anatomy of the seventeenth-century Imperial detached palace (or "Villa'') at Katsura. Although the subjects of Chicago, Chicago and Katsura are quite different from one another, depicting different eras in different countries, Ishi-moto drew on the Bauhaus aesthetic in capturing them. On the one hand, Ishimoto presents life in Chicago according to the principles of Moholy-Nagy's Vision in Motion, observing and structuring the inner life of his fellow humans through their interactions with the new technology. On the other hand, he presents the Imperial design of the Villa at Katsura as if it were a result of Bauhaus geometrical design theories avant la lettre.
Along with Moholy-Nagy, Ishimoto can count Hiroshige, the nineteenth-century painter, and Basho, the Japanese Haiku poet of the seventeenth century, as major influences. Each of them, in their respective disciplines, was a master of the genre representing each of the customary stations along the Tokkaido—the major road linking the capital at Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to the Emperor in Kyoto. From Hiroshige, he took elegance and an ability to catch a moment in time; and from Basho, a contemplative delight in tiny details. Rather than coach stops at guest houses along a road, Ishimo-to's stations of the Tokkaido are the 29 "JR" station stops between Tokyo and Kyoto on the publicly-owned Yamanote-sen of the national Japanese Railway. The poignant pictures in Yamanote-sen 29 are a further illustration of his ability to grasp a historical design in the context of modern technology.
The same elegance and contemplative regard found in Yamanote-sen 29 are also found in the sequences of clouds, footprints, and crushed leaves that comprise an increasing proportion of his work in the 1990s. Ishimoto had addressed these subjects earlier in his career, but he has dwelt on them— pushing them to abstraction—even as the patient clarity of his earlier work was helping him become accepted as one of the main talents in twentieth-century Japanese photography. His influence on the younger generation of Japanese photographers and especially on members of the VIVO (Esperanto for "life") group has so far come from this earlier phase. Most notable among the members of that group who were affected by the intimate moments he found in the city were Ikko Narahara, Eikoh Hosoe, and Kukuji Kawada.
Ishimoto continues to take and print photographs. Since before his studies at the Institute of Design he has printed his own pictures, a practice that explains why his gelatin silver prints are never larger than 11 x 14 inches—the largest size he can print in his darkroom. Along with re-envisioning his classic series in his 1983 color pictures of the Katsura palace, or his collection Chicago, Chicago 2 of the same year, Ishimoto re-investigates his old negatives, allowing him to rediscover his former triumphs and fashion new insights from them.
Dan Friedman
See also: Bauhaus; Callahan, Harry; Institute of Design; Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo; Photography in Japan; Photography in the United States: the Midwest; Siskind, Aaron
Biography
Born in San Francisco, 14 June 1921 to Japanese parents; moved to Japan in 1924. Graduated from Kochi Prefec-tural Agricultural High School, 1939; traveled to United States, 1939. Studied agriculture at the University of California, Los Angeles; interned in Japanese-American camp, 1942-1944. Enrolled in architecture program at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1946. Studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind 1948-1952 at Institute of Design (ID), Chicago. Won prize in young photographers' contest sponsored by Life magazine; ID's Moholy-Nagy Prize 1951, 1952. Returned to Japan, 1953. Married Shigeru, 1956, Won New Talent Prize of the Japanese Photography Critics' Association for his book Aru Hi Aru Tokoro (Someday, Somewhere) in 1958. Lived and photographed in Chicago, 19581961. Returned to Japan and won Camera Art Award for ''Face of Chicago'' in 1962. Obtained Japanese citizenship, 1969. Mainichi Art Award for his book Chicago, Chicago, 1969. Received the Annual Award of the Japan Photography Association and the Ministry of Education's Art Encouragement through the Selection of Excellence Award, 1978. Japanese government awarded him Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 1983, Order of Cultural Merit in 1993, and Man of Cultural Distinction in 1997. Lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Individual Exhibition
1953 Museum of Modern Art, New York
1954 Takemiya Gallery, Tokyo
1960 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illionois
1961 Museum of Modern Art, New York
1962 Chicago, Chicago, Nihonbashi Shirokiya Department Store, Tokyo
1977 Mandala of Two Worlds, The Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo
1981 The Eleven-Faced Goddess of Mercy of Kokoku, Seibu Otsu Hall, Otsu
1982 Chicago, Chicago and Someday, Somewhere, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1983 Chicago, Chicago II and Yamanote-sen 29 (Yamanote-Line 29), Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1984 Katsura: Space and Form, Seibu Otsu Hall, Otsu
1986 Machi-Hito - Katachi (City - People - Form), Photo
Gallery International, Tokyo
1988 HANA, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1989 KATSURA, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1990 The Photography of Yasuhiro Ishimoto: 1948-1989, Yurakucho Art Forum, Tokyo
1992 Fallen Leaves and Crushed Cans, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1994 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: KATSURA and Recent Works, Recontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France
1995 Recent Works: Never the Same and Ise Shrine, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1996 Joy of Color, Photo Gallery International, Shibaura
1996 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Remembrance of Things Present, National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1997 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: The Chicago Years, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York and, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1998 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Flow, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1998 KATSURA, Photo Gallery International, Shibaura
1998 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Chicago and Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
1999 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
1999 Yasuhiro Ishimoto: The Mandalas of the Two Worlds at the Kyoo Gokoku-ji, The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Group Exhibitions
1953 Contemporary Photography—Japan and America, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1955 The Family of Man, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1956 Contemporary Photography—Japan and France, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1960, 1961, 1963 Contemporary Japanese Photography, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1967 Photography in the 20th Century, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (toured Canada and United States, 1967-1973)
1974 New Japanese Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1977 The Photographer and the City, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
1979 Japanese Photography Today and Its Origin, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna (traveled to the Palazza Reale Milan; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; and the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London)
1980 The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography at the Institute of Design, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois
1984 The Art of Photography: Past and Present, from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Art, Osaka
1988 Eight Japanese Photographers, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1990 Tokyo: A City Perspective, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
1991 Innovation in Japanese Photography in the 1960s, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
1991 Photographs in Japan 1955-1965, Yamaguchi Prefec-tural Museum, Yamaguchi
1991 SITE WORK: Architecture in Photography since Early Modernism, Photographers' Gallery, London
1995 Photography and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 1953-1995, National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1996 1953 Shedding Light on Art in Japan, Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo
1996 Together Again, Gallery 312, Chicago, Illinois
1996 When Harry Met Aaron: Chicago Photography 19461971, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois
1996 Modern Photography, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama
1997 City Images in Photography from the Museum Collection, National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
1998 Waterproof, EXPO '98, Lisbon
1999 The World and the Ephemeral, Recontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France
Selected Works
Aru Hi, Aru Tokoro (Someday, Somewhere), 1958
Chicago, Chicago, 1958
Chicago, Chicago 2, 1983
Katsura Villa, 1983
Ise Shrine, 1995
Further Reading
Crane, Susan, ed. Museums and Memory. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Putzar, Edward. Japanese Photography 1945-1985. Tucson, Arizona: Pacific West, 1987.
Westerbeck, Colin. Yasuhiro Ishimoto: a tale of two cities, with Arata Isozaki and Fuminori Yuloe. Chicago, Illinois: Art Institute of Chicago, 1999.
Otsuji, K., and F. Yukoe. The Photography of Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Tokyo: Seibu Museum of Art, 1989.
Szarkowski, John, and S. Yamagishi. New Japanese Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1974.
Ichikawa, Masanori, and Rei Masuda. Yasuhiro Ishimoto, remembrance of things present: 14Feb-30 Mar. Tokyo: National Film Center, the National Museum of Modern Art, 1996.
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