Biography
Yoichi Ishida is an artist, historian, and philosopher. Born and raised in Japan, Yoichi holds a BA and an MA in philosophy from the University of Nevada, Reno and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Until August 2022, he was an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair of Philosophy at Ohio University in Athens, OH. His research in the history and philosophy of visual representations of invisible phenomena as well as the science and philosophy of human visual perception led him to pursue photography as an artist. In 2022, Yoichi moved to Leeds, UK to join his partner Marina and their three cats, and in 2023 he completed an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art.
Statement
My current practice addresses sociopolitical issues about land, using methods informed of vision science, human geography, and the history of science, art, and philosophy.
My project The Democracy of Space addresses landownership in the UK, where enclosure has created privatized, divided fields. But there are some open fields, such as public parks, that people have come to own democratically. I study these community-owned spaces and divisions of space.
My other project, A Simultaneity of Things, addresses the issue of immigration and lived experience of an immigrant. My own recent immigration to the UK created an opportunity to examine how my sensibilities, which have been cultivated in Japan and the US, respond to a new culture and place. This work examines the normal or normalized experience and representation of the ordinary British landscape and in turn celebrates all the ways—including an immigrant’s and minority’s way—of experiencing it.
In both projects, I work by walking around where I live, being driven by a curiosity about the place and a desire to belong to it.
