TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP

YASUHIRO ISHIMOTO

This exhibition focuses on Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs of urban landscapes in Tokyo and Chicago, taken from the 1940s to the 1960s. Ishimoto (1921–2012) was born into a Japanese immigrant farming family in San Francisco. During World War II, he was interned in Camp Amache, a concentration camp for Japanese Americans in Colorado, where he was first exposed to photography. Three years after the war ended, Ishimoto attended the Institute of Design, a design school in Chicago that followed in the footsteps of the Bauhaus, and began his career as a photographer under the tutelage of Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and others.

Ishimoto traveled to Japan in 1953 and produced a series of photographs of Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, one of his signature projects. In 1958, he published his first photo book, Someday Somewhere, which captured the people and scenes of Chicago and Tokyo—and breathed new life into the postwar Japanese art world. Ishimoto based himself in Tokyo after that, leaving behind a body of work that presents a unique perspective on subjects such as Japanese traditional beauty (as exemplified by the Ryokai Mandalas and Ise Grand Shrine), urban landscapes, portraits, the sky, and water. Ishimoto also went beyond photography to become deeply involved in postwar international trends in design, architecture, and other fields, ultimately leading to his recognition as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government. In 2020 and 2021, a major retrospective of his career was held across three venues: the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, and the Museum of Art, Kochi.