I vow to Diane Dufour great admiration.
With THE BALLthat she succeeded in transforming At Isisa prostitute bar and brothel that became a ruined PMU into one of the most important places in world photography, is a constant delight.
And yet, its programming is demanding.
Currently, she presents: Yasuhiro Ishimoto.
We dedicate this day to him.
Jean-Jacques Naudet
Yasuhiro Ishimoto, a destiny between two countries – By Agathe Cancellieri
Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-2012) remains today a major and yet little-known figure on the world photographic scene. This anomaly perhaps finds its origin in the singularity of a destiny which placed him at the crossroads of multiple influences: a documentary approach in the great American tradition, an ascetic formalism inherited from his Japanese culture and a pronounced taste for experimentation inherent to the German Bauhaus.
Born in 1921 in San Francisco where his father worked for a salt company, Ishimoto returned to Japan at the age of three and grew up on a farm on the island of Shikoku. In 1939, aged eighteen and with his American passport in his pocket, his family sent him to San Francisco to study agriculture, thus avoiding being drafted into the Japanese army. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, caught up in the turmoil of the world conflict, Ishimoto suffered the fate of thousands of Japanese on American soil: he was interned and subjected to forced labor in the “regroupment” camp of Amache, in Colorado . It was there, thanks to an amateur friend, that he learned about photography in all its stages: shooting, development and printing. Upon his release in 1944, Ishimoto decided to study architecture. When he is refused permission to live on American shores (due to the military training he received in Japan when he was a high school student), his default choice is Chicago, which he sees on the “path” to New York, city where he dreams of studying.
By Agathe Cancellieri, photography historian and gallery owner. Specialist of the Chicago School, she defended her thesis A new American vision: the photographic department of the Institute of Design in Chicago from 1946 to 1972 in 2019, at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Excerpts from Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Sweet Home Chicagotext of the book Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Lines and bodies.
Related News :