Toshio Shibata

Internationally known for his detailed abstract photographs of the Japanese landscape, Toshio Shibata accepted a commission from the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1995 to turn his astute lens on the United States. The resulting works exhibit a startling beauty that transforms the reality of America's vast landscapes into images that are magical, mysterious, and altogether unique. Shibata's photographs, which often focus on fragments of a greater whole, provide an entirely new perspective on the western United States, particularly of the same type of water control facilities that had frequently been the subject of Shibata's Japanese work. Staci Boris places this American series of Shibata's photographs in the context of the rest of his career and compares his work to that of other landscape photographers.