Kohei Yoshiyuki

Kohei Yoshiyuki (吉行耕平, Yoshiyuki Kōhei, born 1946) is a Japanese photographer who attracted much attention in 1979 with his exhibition "Kōen" (公園, 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",^[1] with photographs of people in sexual activities in Shinjuku and Yoyogi parks (both in Tokyo), mostly with unknown spectators around them. The photographs were taken with a 35 millimetre camera and infrared flashbulbs. Gerry Badger and others have commented on how the photographs raise questions about the boundaries between spectator, voyeur and participant.

Yoshiyuki's works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh).^[2]

Examples of Yoshiyuki's series The Park were included in the exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera which was on view at Tate Modern from May 28 to October 3, 2010.^[3]

Books by Yoshiyuki[]

• Dokyumento: Kōen (ドキュメント公園, Document: Park). Sebun Mukku 4. Tokyo: Sebun-sha, 1980.
• Tōsatsu! Sunahama no koibito-tachi: Uwasa no rabu airando sennyū satsueiki (盗撮！砂浜の恋人たち：噂のラブアイランド潜入撮影記). Sandē-sha, 1983. ISBN 978-4-88203-022-5.
• Middonaito fōkasu: Mayonaka no sekigaisen tōsatsu (ミッドナイト・フォーカス：真夜中の赤外線盗撮). Tokyo: Tokuma, 1989. ISBN 978-4-19-503985-4.
• Yoshiyuki Kōhei shashinshū: Sekigai kōsen (吉行耕平写真集：赤外光線). Tokyo: Hokusōsha, 1992. ISBN 978-4-938620-36-3.

References[]

Literature[]

• Parr, Martin, and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History. Vol. 2. London: Phaidon, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7148-4433-6.

External links[]

• "Down in the park: Yoshiyuki Kohei's nocturnes". English translation of an interview of Yoshiyuki by Nobuyoshi Araki, first published in Weekend Super in 1979. Aperture, no. 188, Fall 2007. Included within the press kit (PDF) for the "Park" exhibition at the Yossi Milo Gallery. Accessed 1 March 2008.
• Gefter, Philip. "Sex in the park, and its sneaky spectators". New York Times, 23 September 2007. Also "Kohei Yoshiyuki captures Japanese voyeurism". International Herald Tribune, 24 September 2007.
• "Layers of voyeurism". New York Times. Needs Flash.
• "Kohei Yoshiyuki". First of a series of 13 photographs. The Guardian Online.
• Yossi Milo Gallery, The Park
• "Fain-āto no owari to Yoshiyuki Kōhei". On Yoshiyuki and his exhibition in New York.