YASUHIRO ISHIMOTO

This unique alchemy is the result of an extraordinary journey. Trained at the Institute of Design from 1948 to 1952, Ishimoto embodies the first generation of photographers of the Chicago School, marked by the dual influence of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Upon his return to Japan in 1953, he became a major figure on the Japanese art scene. His photographs of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto created a body of work that sent shockwaves through the world of architecture and design, as evidenced by the words of art director Ikko Tanaka, who noted that Ishimoto was the first to introduce “an intellectual and austere modernism that greatly inspired us... His stone paths evoked Brancusi sculptures... He cast a radically new gaze on the world.”

During the same period, Ishimoto paved the way for new approaches to the photo book with the publication of one of the most important works in the history of Japanese publishing, Someday, Somewhere (1958). This book, with its experimental graphic design for the time, had a significant influence on a young generation of photographers and designers.

Driven by a quest for constant reinvention, Ishimoto became a conduit of modernity in photography, blending Japanese culture with Western influence. Observing his scenes of Chicago or Tokyo, with their orderly and vibrant beauty, one understands why he became, in the words of Stefan Zweig, an “extraordinary intermediary between Eastern and Western people, a man of double dimension, capable on the one hand of contemplating with astonishment and respect the foreign aspect of this beauty, and on the other of representing it and making us understand it as something self-evident, as a beauty experienced from within and made his own.”

– Diane Dufour, curator of the exhibition****