Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park

For his notorious Park photos, taken by night in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, Yoyogi, and Aoyama parks during the 1970s, KOHEI YOSHIYUKI used a 35mm camera, infrared film and flash to capture a secret community of lovers and voyeurs of various ages and sexualities. His pictures document the people who gathered in these parks at night for clandestine trysts, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched—and sometimes participated in—these couplings. 

Yoshiyuki took the photographs in The Park, taken in Tokyo's Shinjuku, Yoyogi, and Aoyama parks during the 1970s. The artist used a 35mm camera, infrared film, and flash to document the people who gathered there at night for clandestine trysts, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched-and sometimes participated in-these couplings. With their raw, snapshot-like quality, these images not only uncover the hidden sexual exploits of their subjects, both homosexual and heterosexual, but also provoke questions about our own attitudes towards surveillance and voyeurism. Collectively, these photographs also serve as a chronicle of a Japan we rarely see. 

This newly designed, comprehensive edition of Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park brings this collectible classic back into print and includes new images and documentary materials.

Kohei Yoshiyuki's (1946-2022; Japanese) daring photographs of Tokyo's subculture of voyeurs revealed an underbelly to the city's otherwise polished and reserved surface, and eventually established him as one of Japan's most important modern photographers. Yoshiyuki broke ground with his photographs taken in the early 1970s of couples engaged in sex acts in Tokyo's public parks, often accompanied by curious onlookers. His daring documentation of forbidden acts forced viewers to reckon with their own private lives and desires as well as the psychic unease felt collectively by the Japanese people following decades of loss and defeat for the country. It was not until 2007 that these photographs resurfaced in The Park, the artist's first U.S. show at Yossi Milo Gallery, revitalizing the artist's career and launching him onto an international stage.