Yasuhiro Ishimoto (石元泰博, Ishimoto Yasuhiro, b. San Francisco, 1921–2012) was a Japanese-American photographer. Photographer and critic Minor White called Ishimoto a “visual bilinguist,” due to Ishimoto’s development of a subtle syncretism of Eastern and Western aesthetic sensibilities in capturing both fleeting human moments and stolid urban architecture during his long career.
Ishimoto was born in California and raised in his parents’ hometown in Kōchi Prefecture in Japan. After graduating from high school in Japan in 1939, he returned to California to work and study in agriculture until he and his family were subjected to internment in the remote plains of Colorado at the Amache Internment Camp from 1942 to 1944. During this period of internment, Ishimoto began to learn photographic techniques from fellow Japanese-Americans. He returned to Chicago in 1944 after his release, briefly studying architecture at Northwestern University in 1946—he did not finish the program, but architecture remained central to his career thereafter.
Ishimoto’s photographic career began when he joined the Fort Dearborn Camera Club in 1947 (now Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum) upon introduction by Japanese-American photographer Harry Kinzi Shigeta. His work was well-received in the club and won many competitions. At Shigeta’s recommendation, Ishimoto enrolled at the Institute of Design (ID) of the Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as The New Bauhaus (the American descendent of the German Bauhaus). At ID, Ishimoto studied Bauhaus aesthetics before entering the photography department, where his instructors included renowned American photographer Harry M. Callahan. Ishimoto was the recipient of numerous photography awards, including the Moholy-Nagy Scholarship during his 3rd and 4th years of study. In 1955, Edward Steichen selected Ishimoto’s work for the legendary Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. From the 1950s on, Ishimoto also experimented in color, producing vibrant, multi-exposure abstractions for the design magazine Approach, studies of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, and a full-size reproduction of Monet's immense Water Lilies triptych at MoMA. In 1969, he published a photo book of monochrome street scenes, Chicago, Chicago (シカゴ、シカゴ), which cemented his reputation as a keen observer of city life; at the time, he was also teaching at various design schools in Tokyo. In 1996, the Cabinet of Japan named him a Person of Cultural Merit.
Ishimoto's work can be found in many major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Art, Kochi; and the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin.