Ishimoto Yasuhiro : ‘Katsura Imperial Villa’ (Photography)

::
‘Katsura Imperial Villa’
Ishimoto Yasuhiro
Photograph
::

‘I feel that there is a kind of fateful link between Bauhaus and me. I would like to donate fifty-five of my photographs to the Bauhaus Archive Berlin’, said Ishimoto Yasuhiro in a letter to the Bauhaus Archive…

Born in San Francisco, the son of Japanese immigrants, Ishimoto was trained as a photographer at the Chicago Institute of Design. He numbers among the few people who have ever received permission to photograph the interior and exterior spaces of the centuries-old architectural complex. The photos were mainly taken in the early 1950s and early 1980s. They portray the building, which was praised as exemplary by the architects Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut, within an intentionally modernist approach.

Many of the photographs that were mainly shot by Ishimoto in May 1954 were published in 1960 in the photobook Katsura together with texts by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. The images deviate from the conventional standards of architectural photography, making no attempt to portray representative features. They show an eye for detail, often as abstract compositions in which lines organize the surface structure and textures fill the spaces between them…

The palace is segmented by Ishimoto into flat patterns that consist solely of grey tonal values. However, the subject of the photo always remains recognizable. Ishimoto fully exploits the available techniques of black-and-white photography with its dense black tones. His approach seems appropriate to the subject, yet also distant. [Ex : Between Japanese tradition and Western modernism]

Remembering Modernisms Roots

Museum of Contemporary Art

Stephen Daiter Gallery

Azurebumble