Signed, Yasuhiro Ishimoto - Shibuya, Shibuya - 2007

Shibuya, Shibuya

Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Kyuryudou/2007/Japanese/230*265*23

Shibuya, Shibuya” is a collection of works by Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-2012), a leading Japanese photographer. The words “formative beauty” and “design-like” are often used to describe Ishimoto's photographic expression, and his outstanding aesthetic eye, developed at the New Bauhaus, created a unique worldview that no other Japanese photographer of the time had. Ishimoto's architectural photographs, such as those of Katsura Imperial Villa, and landscapes that capture the city in a figurative way are very well known, but the base of his work is probably street snapshots. This attitude can be seen in his masterpieces “One Day in a Place” and “Chicago, Chicago. This book is composed of illustrations taken mainly without a viewfinder in the Shibuya Scramble Crossing area in Ishimoto's later years, when he was over 80 years old. Ishimoto's sense of form and his unique eye for observation are at the bottom of his work, but his many works convey his stance of enjoying the act of photography itself, as if he was obsessed with the culture that the city unleashes and the fascination of human individuality.