Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities

Although he is a Japanese photographer who has lived in Tokyo for more than 45 years, Yasuhiro Ishimoto received his art education in the late 1940s and early 1950s at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he studied under Harry Callahan. Ishimoto's photographs of Chicago document a period of profound social, political, and racial change and record the character of the city from its lakefront beaches and downtown streets to its South Side neighborhoods. Ishimoto returned to Japan in 1953 and began a documentation of Tokyo. In his work, Tokyo and Chicago have become sister cities in the personal vision of an artist whose patience as a photographer and tenacity of observation have enabled him to produce the extraordinary body of work evident in such books as Someday Somewhere and Chicago, Chicago. He has also produced two books on Katsura villa, another on flowers, and several others on Japanese subjects.

Large as is the range of Ishimoto's tale of two cities, in recent years another side of his sensibility has come to the fore in very subtle studies of rotting leaves, footprints in snow, cloud formations, and wind-ruffled water at his feet. Now 77, Ishimoto is revealing a meditative dimension that has brought him recognition as a "Person of Cultural Distinction" in Japan and serious regard worldwide for his artistic achievements.