Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-2012) was born in the United States to Japanese farmers who returned to Japan while he was still a child. After attending Kochi Agricultural High School, he returned to the United States in 1939 to study architecture at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois located just north of Chicago. He was unable to finish his studies as a result of WWII and was interred in the Granada War Relocation Center (Amache internment camp in Granada, Colorado) from 1942-1944 alongside other Japanese Americans. It was at the camp where Ishimoto began to learn photography. He returned to Chicago in 1946, joined the Fort Dearborn Camera Club then enrolled in the Photography Department of the Chicago Institute of Design (currently the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1948 where he studied with renowned photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind). He stayed in Chicago photographing its neighborhoods for a decade and returned several times throughout his life.
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