2016 / Huntington Library Exhibition: Japanese American photographer captures uniqueness of American architectures, June 18 – Oct. 3

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene

June 18 – Oct. 3, 2016

Huntington Library, at Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art

Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs of Greene & Greene architecture are shown for the first time in the U.S.

The influential photographer turned his lens toward the work of California Arts and Crafts architects Greene & Greene in 1974, producing a suite of images for the Japanese design magazine Approach.

Before his death in 2012, Ishimoto expressed his wish to have these photographs shown in the U.S. Now, more than 40 years after the photos were made, his wish comes true.

Forty-six sumptuous black-and-white photographs printed by the artist and on loan from The Museum of Art, Kochi (Kochi Kenritu Bijutsukan) inJapan are on view. Forty showcase the Approach magazine commission and six are seminal photographs that Ishimoto made of the 17th-century Katsura Imperial Villa in Japan in 1954.

“Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene” coincides with the reopening of a refreshed permanent display of Greene & Greene furniture (organized in collaboration with the Gamble House / University of Southern California).

Although the Japanese influence on the architecture of the Greene brothers has been widely acknowledged, this exhibition is the first in the U.S. to examine the influence from a Japanese perspective.

This exhibition is curated by Anne Mallek, former curator of the Gamble House and Edward R “Ted” Bosley, director of the Gamble House, a 1908 Greene & Greene structure in Pasadena.

Born in San Francisco in 1921 to immigrant parents, Yasuhiro Ishimoto grew up in Japan and returned to California to attend college in 1939. In 1942, he was removed to a Colorado internment camp, where he spent the war years nurturing an interest in photography. He later enrolled at the Chicago Institute of Design, founded by ex-Bauhaus instructor László Moholy-Nagy. Ishimoto returned to Japan in the 1960s.

He passed away in Feb. 2012 at 90 year old. The Museum of Art, Kochi has the permanent gallery of Yasuhiro Ishimoto and his archive under the name of Ishimoto Yasuhiro Photo Center.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is located at 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108. (626) 405-2100. www.huntington.org