"Dear Corbu, everything we've been fighting for has parallels in ancient Japan culture. The Japanese house is the best and most modern I know and it is truly prefabricated."
Walter Gropius, who visited Japan in 1954, wrote these enthusiastic words to his friend Le Corbusier. As a founder of the Bauhaus School (along with Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier) he aimed at "standardisation, prefabrication and simplicity" - and was surprised to find all these principles in Japan.
In 1960 a stunning square book, "Katsura. Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture" was published, with essays by Walter Gropius, Kenzo Tange and 140 photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro, the book coverered in blue silk with a white circle in the middle, intended as a reference to the Japanese flag.
Now the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin shows an exhibition of 50 photographs of Katsura by Ishimoto Yasuhiro.
Everything I quote here I learned from this exhibition.
Yasuhiro was born in 1921 in San Francisco and spent his adolescent years in Japan, then returned 1939 to Chicago to study architecture.
Two times he took photographs from the Villa Katsura, a building that Prince Toshihito had started around 1620 at the Katsura River west of Tokyo, on a ground with a particularly good view of the moon.
In 1883 the villa became the property of the Emperor, and was restored in the 1980s. Its gardens extend over 50000 square metres.
The black and white photographs of 1960 are very impressive, almost as if nobody ever lived in the buildings, the three dimensions of a room are reduced to flat patterns. In 1983 Ishimoto Yasuhiro published coloured photos of Katsura with "all of the elements which had been omitted from the extremely purified photography of the 1960 volume" (Kuraishi Shino).
Ishimoto Yasuhiro himself asks:
"I suddenly began to realize that what I had previously sought as beauty was in fact nothing more than a reductive beauty. I sought the extreme where all surplus was completely avoided, and yet the extremely correct form that resulted - wasn't it a completely narrow amount that did not allow any additional baggage?"
A very interesting question. Photography is always a subjective way to see the world, it is an art - you think about your composition, you omit, you choose a special detail, a segment or angle -
in short: you create.
The great photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro died on 6th February 2012.
15 comments:
This was such a fascinating post, Britta.
Thank you!
SSG xxx
Thank you for this Katsura post, Britta. Noy only in the Katsura villa but also in most(better to say all) of other Japanese traditional (tatami) rooms, simplicity has always been much appreciated. I in fact prefer seeing non-decorated space. I love to see for example only one camellia flower in a vase in the space while sitting in it. The flower(whether it is red or white) would look more vivid and impressive and I suppose we can appreciate the life and beauty of it much more. You may call it a kind of minimalism. The Japanese concepts of simplicity usually come from Zen philosophy in which nothing is sacred though this "nothing" is different from nonbeing. I always wonder how we can really see the inner qualities of materials and objects.... Zen is deep. Sorry for my confusing comment.
.......and that's why I love to read blogs - I learn something new. When we visited Japan I was disturbed by what I felt to be the cold environment in hotels and another spaces. I loved the outdoor spaces, and could relate to the garden plans - the spareness, the clean lines - but couldn't relate to the interiors.
I always see something new in my photos that I didn't see with the naked eye. Love the architecture...parallel lines.
ps- Have you figured out which FB name you have?
Architectural photography is quite an interesting "subset" of photography overall. I recently saw a film about Julius Shulman called "Visual Acoustics." He photographed the work of "nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry." A lot of the buildings (Wright excepted), I didn't like, but his photography seemed to consist of masterpiece after masterpiece. His work, too, very much proves your point, "you think about your composition, you omit, you choose a special detail, a segment or angle -in short: you create."
hello Britta,
I checked the internet to see the photos taken by Ishimoto. They are all in black and white, and mostly are sensual in nature. But it is evident that his photographs belong to a particular creative genre with recurring themes.
Thanks for introducing that creative genius to me..
Britta, this was a nice tribute to Ishimoto. I have, for a while, been wary of all forms of standardization and reductionism but continue to prize a minimalist spirit. Contradiction? Not sure. In any event, a wonderful post.
Dear SSG,
thank you! I wish you a beautiful holiday in London.
Dear Sapphire,
thank you for these interesting reflections! I am always drawn in by the tranquility of minimalism - and see the charme of the concept. ( On a trivial basis I use it when my heart/head is in a muddle: first thing is to clean around me the heaps of books and other things - and then it is better).
I also see beauty more distinct in a single flower - but have to confess that I love a field of buttercups too - the old thing with me: drawn between extremes. I love to look at one picture at a time (and change it after some weeks), and I prefer talking to one person to being in a party-crowd. (Though sometimes I love that too) Zen is fascinating and difficult - I love discipline, calmness, being centered - and the idea of 'nothing' attracts me very much. So very liberating, isn't it?
Dear Pondside,
thank you! I always fear that I do not 'mix' my themes enough (e.g. boring life out of you all by yet another "Friedrich II'-post :-) I long to see the gardens in Japan - till now I haven't been there, though my father often told us about it. As I wrote to Sapphire: I'm one for extremes - I like the clear simplicity, but my rooms need a little 'touch for the heart' (so you'll find a small silver statue of the Bremer town musicians or the porcellain box you see above on "Witty&Pretty" - sentimental reminders of my life).
Dear Janet,
thank you for your comment: I love those surprises on photographs too (though I seldom picture unknown people in a group on my 'official' photos - if I dare, there are always very big surprises :-)
Yes, Facebook (not I) made a big muddle and now I have the new Britta-profile: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003530918932
- I love everyone to join me there!
Dear Susan,
thank you for the wonderful tip about Julius Shulman! Not all the names of the architects are known to me - that is the wonder of Wikipedia etc that I can look them up in a jiffy! Buildings are very difficult: sometimes I think: fine - but to live in it? No, thank you! Or at the Potsdamer Platz: highest buildings, glass and concrete - buildings like the blade of an axe, 'cutting chi' - interesting to look it, but then everybody runs away...
Dear Tomz,
thank you! The first series is all black and white, but the second is in colour (and with more "things" in it). By the way: I would appreciate to get an impression of the buildings of your country.
Dear Suze,
thank you. The standardization is one of the Bauhaus-gists, too - I think there is a fine line between improving the conditions of people and prescribing how they should live. But sometimes I think: a little bit less of the Tenthousand Things would be fine, than I don't need my energy to decide which of the 203 toothpastas in the supermarket I should buy, but use it for better things (as reading a detective novel, hahaha)
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