Yasuhiro Ishimoto, the Photographer who Merged Japanese Sensibility with New Bauhaus

Traditional Japanese architecture and New Bauhaus formalism are two aesthetic worlds that are often kept at a distance imposed not only by geography. Politics and persecution forced the Bauhaus from its native Germany to Chicago in 1937. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour just four years later rendered cross pollination between the two cultures ever more complex. One photographer, however, became the incarnation of a new visual bilingualism that revealed innate similarities between the two worlds, proving the importance of immigration in bridging even the most disparate of cultures. 

 Through a curation of original prints across Le BAL’s two floors, ‘Lines and Bodies’ traces the early years of Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographic career. From his early collages to the photographs that would cement him in art history, this eye-opening retrospective introduces a figure renowned in Japan to an audience in Europe, where the photographer is often overlooked. Ishimoto is touted in Japan as one of the early masters who brought New Bauhaus modernism to the country, through images putting traditional Japanese scenes in direct dialogue with the Western avant-garde.

Ishimoto’s unique alchemy owes much to a tumultuous biography. Born in San Francisco, Ishimoto’s family immigrated back to Japan when he was four years old. Escaping enlistment in the Japanese army, Ishimoto returned to America in 1939. However, persecution of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbour resulted in  him being sent for four years to an internment camp. During this time, Ishimoto was introduced to photography by a fellow inmate. Released in 1945, Ishimoto moved to Chicago to study architecture.

Joining the Chicago Institute of Design founded by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, which implored the teachings of the New Bauhaus, Ishimoto integrated into the Photography Department. Headed by Henry Callahan, the program emphasized experimental modernism, design and astute observation. Callahan brought his students out of the studio and into the street, teaching that photography should be about something, in addition to being about itself. This apt instruction led Ishimoto to enhance his sensibility, capturing starkly contrasted and abstracted images of 1950s Chicago. Through his expressionist style and unsentimental social commentary, Ishimoto became part of a movement of photographers spearheading the 20th century American photographic avant-garde.

Among the first images on display at Le BAL is Chicago, Snow and Door (1949-1950), where dark angular urban architecture is illuminated by the accumulation of snow. In the series Chicago, Town (1948-1952), doors and street signs make for endless frames, their exact contours difficult to make out. Other images show Chicagoans captured from unexpected angles, appearing daringly close to the camera. Ishimoto’s expressionistic street photography is underscored by an asymmetry and tranquility that recalls the seven aesthetic principles in zen philosophy, revealing that the photographer’s roots were present from the onset of his career. Ishimoto was transforming the world as he saw it into a distinct photographic language, a principle of modernism that was yet to take hold in Japan.  

The subtle fusion present in Ishimoto’s work became overt thanks to a research trip commissioned by famed photographer Edward Steichen. Returning to Japan for the first time in 14 years, Ishimoto was struck by the revelation that the traditional architecture of the Imperial Villa Katsura and the modernist art of the New Bauhaus were markedly similar. In a series titled Villa Katsura, tightly framed photographs of the building lead viewers to perceive the Villa as a series of rectangular forms à la Mondrian, revealing that modernism mirrors the visual cues of Japanese “Ma.”

Returning to further his study of the Villa in 1954, Ishimoto captured The New Palace and Lawn, an image emblematic of his mastery in cultural fusion. Here, the structure of the building recalls the modernist architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, most notably the Villa Savoye. Furthering an amalgamation of Japanese and modernist principles of art, Ishimoto captured the stone walkways surrounding the Villa, framing forms reminiscent of Brancusi and Hans Arp. Ishimoto had concretised a vision of traditional Japanese aesthetics as a modern subject. 

Ishimoto continued living between Japan and the United States before becoming a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1969. At the time, Japan’s cultural elite were struggling to define the country’s own ‘modernity’ post-occupation, and Ishimoto’s photography presented an American absent-mindedness that allowed for a synthesis of tradition and modernity. Participating in a series of collectives, where he shared his intense formalism and high design qualities, Ishimoto inspired a deluge of Japanese modernist architects and artists, cementing his legacy in art history.

Le BAL’s exhibition – Ishimoto’s first in Europe – revisits the importance of his work in bridging two aesthetic universes, questioning the dialectic of ‘East and West,’ and allowing for new creative languages that inspired the likes of Eikoh Hosoe and Ikko Narahara. Pivotal for cross-cultural conversation, Ishimoto’s works make evident the positive impact of immigration for the art world and beyond.

Lines and Bodies is on show at Le BAL in Paris until the 17th of November.