YASUHIRO ISHIMOTO
LINES AND BODIES
Published by LE BAL and Atelier EXB in 2024
Book size 28.7 x 21.8 cm
216 pages
Hardcover
Language: English with a French translation booklet
An exceptional figure in the history of photography, Ishimoto Yasushiro combined the formal approach of Chicago's New Bauhaus with the quintessence of Japanese aesthetics.
This singular alchemy is the result of a unique life experience: born in the United States of Japanese parents, he spent his childhood on the island of Shikoku, in the south of the Japanese archipelago, before leaving to study photography with the new masters of the medium, Harry M. Callahan and Aaron Siskind, who encouraged their students to photograph the world in a different way: seemingly very formal, their images resonate with great emotional power. Street scenes, portraits of children dressed up for Halloween, billboards, building facades in working-class neighborhoods... Ishimoto's images testify to his mastery of framing and his sensitive perception of textures and motifs.
Without abandoning his critical view of the social and political issues of his time, Ishimoto also experimented with a number of visual elements: series of legs on the beach, snow-covered cars, Chicago apartment building doors, dead leaves turned into abstract compositions. Widely considered an “outsider” by his peers, Ishimoto helped import a “formalist” perspective into the Japanese photographic scene of the time.
Conceived in close collaboration with the Ishimoto Yasuhiro Photographic Center and co-published with LE BAL, the book presents some 180 photographs representative of the first decades of Ishimoto's work, created between Chicago and Tokyo, with a particular focus on his famous series on Villa Katsura.
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An exceptional figure in the history of photography, Ishimoto Yasushiro was able to combine the formal approach of the New Bauhaus in Chicago with the quintessence of Japanese aesthetics.
This singular alchemy is the result of a unique life experience: born in the United States to Japanese parents, he spent his childhood on the island of Shikoku, in the south of the Japanese archipelago, before going to study photography with the new masters of the medium, Harry M. Callahan and Aaron Siskind, who encouraged their students to photograph the world differently: their images, while very formal in appearance, resonate with great emotional power. Street scenes, portraits of children dressed up for Halloween, billboards, building facades in working-class neighborhoods...: Ishimoto's images demonstrate his mastery of framing, his sensitive perception of textures and patterns.
Without renouncing a critical eye on the social and political issues of his time, Ishimoto also carried out numerous visual experiments: series of legs on the beach, snow-covered cars, doors of Chicago buildings, dead leaves transformed into abstract compositions. Widely considered an "outsider" by his peers, Ishimoto helped to import a "formalist" perspective into the Japanese photographic scene of the time.
Conceived in close collaboration with the Ishimoto Yasuhiro Photographic Center and co-published with LE BAL, the book presents approximately 180 photographs representative of the first decades of Ishimoto's work, created between Chicago and Tokyo, with particular attention to his famous series on the Katsura villa.