Ryōsuke Ishizu

Ishizu was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, in 1907. He enrolled at Keiō University but left without graduating in 1932 and returned to Okayama. Around this time his photographs of children began to appear in photography magazines, bringing him sudden public attention. In 1937 Ishizu founded the Chūgoku Photographers Group (中国写真家集団), one of the regional photographers' clubs of the New Photography movement in the mid-1930s. The same year his book How to Photograph Children (こどもの寫し方) was published by Arusu, a leading photography publisher; in 1938 he joined the editorial staff of Arusu's magazine Camera and later became editor-in-chief of its companion publication Photo Culture (写真文化). In 1947, in Tokyo, Ishizu took part in the founding of the Ginryūsha (銀龍社), a cooperative of documentary photographers established with Tadahiko Hayashi and others, which Shōtarō Akiyama also joined. Around 1950 ill health forced Ishizu to stop working; he spent the remainder of his life in Okayama, where he devoted himself to mentoring younger photographers. He recommended both Shōji Ueda and Yōichi Midorikawa for membership in the Ginryūsha. Ishizu's own work centered on children and the life of the local community; his series The Lives of Children (こどもの生活) dates from 1937–38 and is held in the collection of the Yonago City Museum of Art.