was a Japanese photographer whose work included "Kōen" (, Park), photographs of people at night in sexual activities in parks in Tokyo. Prints from ''The Park'' are held in the collections of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

and

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York;

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

(SFMOMA);

Museum of Contemporary Photography The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography. The museum houses a permanent collection as well as the Midwest Photographers Project ...

, Chicago; and

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

. Examples from the series were included in the exhibition ''Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera'' at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...

, SFMOMA and the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

Life and work

He attracted much attention in 1979 with his exhibition "Kōen" (, Park) at the Komai Gallery, Tokyo. The black and white photographs were presented in a book published in 1980 that is "nominally a soft-core voyeur's manual", with photographs of people at night in sexual activities in

Shinjuku is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative centre, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world (Shinjuku Station) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration ...

and

Yoyogi is a neighbourhood in the northern part of Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Geography The area encompassed by Yoyogi is typically defined two ways: * Only the five Yoyogi . * The former , corresponding roughly to the area south of National Route 20 (K� ...

parks (both in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

), mostly with unknown spectators around them. The photographs were taken with a 35 mm

camera A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...

infrared film ''Top:'' tree photographed in the near infrared range. ''Bottom:'' same tree in the visible part of the spectrum. In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is ...

and a

flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

with a special filter.

Gerry Badger Gerald David "Gerry" Badger (born 1946) is an English writer and curator of photography, and a photographer. In 2018 he received the J Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society. Life and career Badger was born in 1946 in Northam ...

and others have commented on how the photographs raise questions about the boundaries between spectator, voyeur and participant. He died on 21 January 2022, at the age of 76.

Publications

*''Dokyumento: Kōen'' (, Document: Park). Sebun Mukku 4. Tokyo: Sebun-sha, 1980. **''The Park''. Stuttgart/Berlin:

Hatje Cantz Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd Hatje Vince Aletti Vince Aletti (born 1945) is a curator, writer, and photography critic. Career Music industry Aletti was a contributing writer for ''Rolling Stone'' from 1970 to 1989. He was the first person to write about disco in an article published by the m ...

, and a transcript of an interview between Yoshiyuki and

Nobuyoshi Araki is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist professionally known by the mononym . Known primarily for photography that blends eroticism and bondage in a fine art context, he has published over 500 books.The number depends on such things ...

. **''The Park''. Santa Fe, NM:

Radius In classical geometry, a radius ( : radii) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the latin ''radius'', meaning ray but also the ...

; New York City: Yossi Milo, 2019. . With an introduction by Yossi Milo, an essay by Aletti, and a transcript of an interview between Yoshiyuki and Araki. Includes new images and documentary materials. *''Tōsatsu! Sunahama no koibito-tachi: Uwasa no rabu airando sennyū satsueiki'' (). Sandē-sha, 1983. . *''Middonaito fōkasu: Mayonaka no sekigaisen tōsatsu'' (). Tokyo: Tokuma, 1989. . *''Yoshiyuki Kōhei shashinshū: Sekigai kōsen'' (). Tokyo: Hokusōsha, 1992. .

Collections

Yoshiyuki's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

, New York: 2 prints (as of 2 February 2022) *

, New York: 4 prints (as of 2 February 2022) *

, San Francisco: 5 prints (as of 2 February 2022) *

, Chicago: 4 prints (as of 2 February 2022) *

: 2 prints (as of 2 February 2022)

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

*''The Park'', Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, 2007

Group exhibitions

*''Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera'',

, London, 2010;

, 2010–12;

, Minneapolis, 2011. Included work from ''The Park''.

References

External links

*"Down in the park: Yoshiyuki Kohei's nocturnes". English translation of an interview of Yoshiyuki by

, first published in ''Weekend Super'' in 1979. ''Aperture,'' no. 188, Fall 2007. Included within th
press kit
(PDF) for the ''Park'' exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery.
Yossi Milo Gallery, The Park
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshiyuki, Kohei 1946 births 2022 deaths Japanese photographers