Chicago

Shoji Osato began his career as a newspaper photographer in Nebraska before relocating in 1925 to Chicago, where he opened his own studio. Here, he photographed the Art Institute lions on a foggy day, framing them dramatically against the Chicago skyline.

When the Chicago World’s Fair opened in 1933, Osato quit photography to operate a tea shop in the newly constructed Japanese garden in Jackson Park, where the Japanese-built Phoenix Pavilion from the 1893 Fair had been relocated. In 1942 the federal government incarcer-ated him as an “enemy alien” for several months; unlike his fellow Japanese Chicagoan Harry K. Shigeta, Osato never returned to photography.