of seeing, from the Bauhaus attitudes of avant-garde experimentalism and engagement with geometric principles, to Siskind's documentary vision, to Callahan's more subjective, instinct-driven practice, all of which played a role in shaping his orientation towards photography in the decades to follow. Return to Japan and Katsura (1953-58) While at the ID, Callahan introduced Ishimoto to renowned photography and curator Edward Steichen, who aided in opening up new professional avenues for the burgeoning photographer's career. Steichen featured two of Ishimoto's images for the landmark Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955 and its accompanying catalogue. One of the images, which was featured in a section of the exhibition on children, was a slightly blurry photograph of a young girl with her wrists bound behind her back and tied to a tree. Though presumably captured in the midst of a playful game, the image carries with it a somewhat unnerving tone that alludes to Ishimoto's resistance against excessive sentimentalism. Steichen also selected Ishimoto to be part of a group show of twenty-five emerging photographers in 1953, followed by a three-person exhibition at MoMA in 1961. In 1954, Ishimoto held his first solo exhibition at Gallery Takemiya, a prominent avant-garde art space in Kanda, Tokyo run by poet and art critic Shūzō Takiguchi. He was also featured in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo's first exhibition on photography in 1953, a group show titled The Exhibition of Contemporary Photography: Japan and America (Gendai shashin-ten: Nihon to Amerika), alongside established figures such as Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and John Szarkowski. The exhibition not only marked a new shift in the Japanese art world in terms of medium, but also participated in the production of post-occupation cultural discourse between the United States and Japan, within which Ishimoto was now fully immersed. In October of 1956, Ishimoto and his wife Kawamata Shigeru were married at the International House of Japan (Kokusai bunka kaikan), in a ceremony overseen by Sōfū Teshigahara and Kenzō Tange. The two had met at a Sōgetsu-ryū study group, where she was an instructor and assistant to Teshigahara. Shigeru would continue to support Yasuhiro as an assistant and producer throughout his career. Katsura Imperial Villa Steichen introduced Ishimoto to MoMA architecture curator Arthur Drexler, who in 1953 tasked Ishimoto, along with architect Junzō Yoshimura, to guide him through Japan to conduct research for his 1954