Press Release - Yasuhiro Ishimoto's Photographs of Greene & Greene Architecture to Go on View for First Time in the U.S.

“Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene” features 46 works by the influential 20th-century Japanese-American photographer

On view June 18 – Oct. 3, 2016
Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art

SAN MARINO, Calif.— Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs of Greene & Greene architecture will be shown for the first time in the United States in a focused loan exhibition on view at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens from June 18 through Oct. 3, 2016. 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, Ishimoto expressed his wish to have these photographs shown in the United States. Now, more than 40 years after the photos were made, his wish will come true.

Forty-six sumptuous black-and-white photographs printed by the artist and on loan from The Museum of Art, Kochi in Japan will be 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). The proximity of the two galleries will allow visitors to experience the designs of Charles and Henry Greene (known for principled, hand-crafted, and distinctive early 20th-century Arts and Crafts homes) just a few yards away from their photographic interpretations by Ishimoto.

“Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s beautifully sensitive photographs of famous Greene & Greene commissions are extraordinary in their composition, texture, and perception, and will add new meaning for visitors, as they wander the galleries and explore our collections,” said Kevin Salatino, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections at The Huntington. “We are seriously committed to collecting, and displaying, works that represent both the field of American Arts and Crafts as well as its predecessor, the European Design Reform movement. Being able to showcase Ishimoto’s work provides a fascinating, and exquisite, interpretation of that world.”

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

“Ishimoto’s images represent a unique vision, fashioned by his birth and education in the United States and a subsequent career in Japan, where he ultimately became a naturalized citizen,” said Anne Mallek, former curator of the Gamble House, a 1908 Greene & Greene structure in Pasadena, Calif. “He developed a new and personal perspective, liberated from historical precedent or framework, so he could capture a 17th-century villa near Kyoto, or the Greenes’ work, in a manner bordering on the abstract. His images don’t set the works of architecture apart from the viewer, nor do they put them on a pedestal. One is pulled in, as if to observe with the photographer the details that only the architects and craftsmen may have cared about in creating the structure.” Mallek curated the exhibition with Edward R. “Ted” Bosley, Gamble House director.