"Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities"
1999-10-17 until 2000-01-02
Museum of Fine Art, Houston
Houston, TX, USA United States of America

Yasuhiro Ishimoto (born 1921) is one of Japan's most important contemporary photographers. In 1997, he was named a Person of Cultural Distinction by the Japanese emperor in recognition of extraordinary achievement in the arts. Ishimoto's role in American photography is also significant.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities features photographs from Chicago and Tokyo, cities of great importance to the photographer that have been the subjects of several of his books. Chicago, Chicago (1969), considered one of the greatest books about an American city ever published, examines Chicago and its inhabitants through street snapshots. Ishimoto captured the urban spirit of Japan in Tokyo (1971) and other books. Ishimoto's most famous series of photographs explores the serene beauty of the architectural and landscape design of a traditional Japanese 17th-century palace, Katsura Villa.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ishimoto studied at the Chicago Institute of Design under the photographer Harry Callahan. The Chicago institute's roots in the Bauhaus tradition of documentary and experimental technique, and Callahan's emphasis on Modernist form and straight photography are the foundation of Ishimoto's approach to photography.

Recently, Ishimoto gave approximately 150 photographs to the Art Institute of Chicago, and A Tale of Two Cities comprises nearly half of this gift. The images range in style from street photography to more formalistic studies of nature and architecture. Also included are Ishimoto's recent, meditative still-life compositions, which explore pattern, texture, and abstraction in found objects.

The presentation of Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is one of the first steps in the museum's major, long-term examination of Japanese photography. For the past several years, the MFAH has been actively adding works by Japanese photographers to its permanent collection, and the first exhibition and book to survey the history of photography in Japan is currently in preparation by Anne Wilkes Tucker, the museum's Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, and Dana Friis-Hansen of the Contemporary Arts Museum.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Texas

Other Important Exhibitions in Houston