Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture, Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro marks 50th Anniversary of the 1960 book Katsura, Ishimoto´s collaboration with architects Kenzo Tange and Walter Gropius
The exhibition and its publication explore the impact of Japanese tradition on Modernism in Japan
Photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro (b. 1921) is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential figures in the development of postwar Japanese photography. Among his most celebrated bodies of work are the photographs he took during 1953-54 of the legendary 17th-century Imperial villa of Katsura, in Kyoto, which infuse the images of the iconic structure with a modernist Bauhaus esthetic. Beginning June 30, 2010, the MFAH will exhibit 70 of these photographs—presenting the images, for the first time, un-cropped and as Ishimoto had originally intended for them to be seen.
Ishimoto Yasuhiro, (Japanese, born 1921), “Untitled”, from the series Katsura, 1953-54. Gelatin silver print, printed 1980-81. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Gift of the artist in memory of Ishimoto Shigeru. 2009.223. ©Ishimoto Yasuhiro
For the last 50 years these photographs have been known only from the landmark 1960 book Katsura: Creation and Tradition in Japanese Architecture, by architect Tange Kenzo with an introduction by Walter Gropius. For that publication, Tange rigorously cropped and sequenced the photographs to promote his agenda in a debate that consumed post-occupation Japan´s cultural elite in the mid-1950s: that of the vital relevance and existence of tradition in their efforts to define modernity. Against this backdrop, the show will explore the nuanced and complex relationship between architecture and photography, and the profound impact these photographs had on the public´s interpretation of Japanese tradition in modern architecture.
“The MFAH received a major gift of 300 photographs from Ishimoto Yasuhiro last fall, and the collection of some 400 photographs now includes work from all of the artist´s major series, including Katsura,” said Dr. Peter C. Marzio, MFAH director. “This is the first time that so many of Ishimoto´s famous photographs of Katsura will be on view in Houston, and the first time that the uncropped images will be shown in such depth.”
“The 1960 Katsura book is regarded as one of the most important books of an architects interpretation of built environments through photography in the 20th century — on par with Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock´s The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (1932),” commented Yasufumi Nakamori, assistant curator of photography, MFAH, and curator of the exhibition. “But the book also represented a perspective specific to postwar Japanese culture. Its images and ideas crystallized the Japanese interpretation of Bauhaus esthetics and functionalism, and gave a cue to a younger generation of Japanese architects in mid-century Japan, including Tange Kenzo and Horiguchi Sutemi, who had been struggling to locate tradition in their modern designs. To Tange, the book was a visual manifesto for his postwar design philosophy, and proved that the function-based expressions of pre-modern Japanese architecture were still relevant, coupled with new architectural technologies and materials.”
About the Katsura Photographs and the Exhibition
During 1953 and 1954, Ishimoto extensively photographed the Imperial Villa of Katsura, near Kyoto. He had just returned to Japan after 14 years in the U.S., including training with Harry Callahan at the “New Bauhaus” of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ishimoto´s unique take on Katsura compared the geometry of the villa to the grid-like composition of a Mondrian painting, and the organic arrangement of the villa´s stepping stones to Arp´s collages and sculptures. In all, Ishimoto produced 300 black-and-white photographs with his large-format camera. The images, which often fragment and abstract the villa architecture and garden, are in dramatic contrast to all earlier photographic depictions of Katsura, which had been photographed as early as 1873 in a nostalgic, Pictorialist style. In these photographs, Ishimoto placed his newfound Bauhaus heritage ahead of his traditional, Japanese one.
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