Untitled, from "Chicago, Chicago"
Maker
Ishimoto, Yasuhiro
(Japanese-American, 1921-2012)
Date1958-1961
MediumGelatin silver print
Dimensionsimage: 9 15/16 in x 7 1/8 in; paper: 14 in x 11 in
Credit LineGift of Roberta and Jack A. Jaffe
Object number1981:126
Collections
Born in San Francisco to Japanese parents on June 14, 1921, Yasuhiro Ishimoto went with his parents to Japan at age three and grew up in Kochi, Japan. He returned to the United States in 1939 to study agriculture at the University of California, but was detained at the Amachi Internment Camp in Armach, Colorado from 1942 to 1944. After World War II, Ishimoto moved to Chicago to study architecture at Northwestern University (1946). He transferred to the Institute of Design in 1948 to study photography under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, earning a BS in 1952. He returned to Japan in 1953, where he kept residence except for a period spent in Chicago from 1959 to 1961 on a fellowship from the Minolta Corporation. His work was exhibited in the The Family of Man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and in numerous one-person international exhibitions thereafter. The Art Institute of Chicago presented his career retrospective in 1999. Ishimoto became a Japanese citizen in 1969; he lived and worked in Japan. In 1983 the government of Japan awarded Ishimoto the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon and in1996 named him a “Person of Cultural Merit.”
Lyon, Danny
1962; printed 2010