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Kohei Yoshiyuki at Yossi Milo
Art in America, Feb, 2008 by Edward Leffingwell
Consider Kohei Yoshiyuki during the 1970s, silent witness to the nighttime fervor of enthusiastic partners in some wooded Tokyo park, a source of amazement to the young photographer. Given the intense voyeurism and the passionate groping documented in these investigatory photographs, modesty seems to have been largely absent as far as his subjects were concerned. Unseen, Yoshiyuki was outfitted for the hunt with a 35mm camera, infrared film and flash. An unwitting sociologist in thrall to his theme, between 1971 and 1979 he frequented three parks where transitory partners--men with women, men with men--engaged in illicit courting rituals that were spied upon by himself and others.
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The untitled 16-by-20-inch photos in the series known as "The Park" are distinguished by unusual illumination. Bounced light selectively emphasizes the ghostly quality of bare skin, clothing, leaves and trees, obscuring identity, occasionally caught and reflected in the retina of the eyes like a cat or deer caught in the projection of a car's headlamps. In one example (Plate 1, 1971), the wash of Yoshiyuki's flash reaches the middle distance, where a couple spoons in a clearing with the lights of Tokyo high-rises in the distance. There is fastidiousness in the blanket of newspaper (Plate 11, 1972) spread out on the bare ground, the woman's sandals placed neatly in the silvery grass near where Yoshiyuki waited in breathless proximity.
In another image (Plate 23, 1971) the focus of his attention includes a pack of peepers inching toward their prey across the open ground, dressed in ordinary clothes and out for a no-frills, no-cost evening of spectacle. The exotic leaves of a tree to the right introduce a formal, esthetic patterning. In what appears to be an act of perverse chivalry, a dominant male steers a woman stripped to her panties away from a clamoring pack of shameless voyeurs (Plates 39 and 40, 1972).
Yoshiyuki's images of 1979 document a more composed etiquette of trolling in a park frequented by men who cruised openly, held hands, fondled and fellated. Mature trees strike strong verticals in the night (Plates 57 to 60) as a group of men come together, illuminated by Yoshiyuki's light. In a separate room were images from "Love Park," a 1978 series of grainy images selected and photographed from clandestine videos abandoned in a hot-sheet hotel.
This show marked Yoshiyuki's first solo exhibition in the U.S. and his first show since 1980. It seems that he works under a pseudonym and his real name remains unknown, but in the midst of the press devoted to the exhibition, bloggers have referenced the Japanese tradition of yarase, a clever staging for impact that is not considered fake. In any case, these images recall a time when ad hoc arenas annexed for the expression of forbidden sexuality in urban America were first celebrated for their provision of freedom and then condemned with the advent of AIDS.
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