May has been a busy month: that’s why I have not yet had a chance to take note of the generous gift from photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto to the Museum of Fine Arts in
Houston that was announced on May 1. Ishimoto, born in San Francisco in 1921 to Japanese parents, gave MFAH 289 photos, spanning his career and including works from his major series. The museum purchased 11 more — bringing its total collection of his work to 400 photographs.
Nearly seventy of the works are already
on view in an exhibit called Ways of Seeing: The Photography of Ishimoto Yasuhiro, which runs until September 13.
Ishimoto learned photography while he was interned in Colorado during WWII, then studied with Harry Callahan at the “New Bauhaus” Institute of Design in Chicago and also with Aaron Siskind. Edward Steichen launched his career in earnest when he chose Ishimoto for the legendary Family of Man exhibition in 1955.
Yasufumi Nakamori, the MFAH’s Assistant Curator of Photography, has written about Ishimoto, who he says “brought the New Bauhaus and the American street
esthetic to postwar Japanese art.”
Why the gift? Nakamori’s longstanding relationship with Ishimoto certainly helped prompt it. (He culled the acquired photos from about 5,000 pictures.) Ishimori also knows Anne Wilkes Tucker, the MFAH’s Curator of Photography, from an earlier exhibit she curated.
The two black-and-white photos here are from his Tokyo series; both are untitled. At left is an untitled work from his Composition series.
Photo Credits: © Ishimoto Yasuhiro