The Park

co-edited with Dashwood Books and FOMU

Over forty years ago, Kohei Yoshiyuki positioned himself in Tokyo’s parks at night with a 35mm camera and infrared film, poised to observe and document an underground aspect of Japanese culture. Today, his images are more relevant than ever, addressing universal issues of surveillance, voyeurism, and privacy. In 1979, when the work was first shown publicly, it threw open a window onto how Japanese people saw themselves: they were both shocked and intrigued. This redesigned, anniversary edition of The Park promises to engage a new audience that may be unfamiliar with Yoshiyuki’s work, but one that is far more accustomed to observing the private lives of others. ⁠⠀
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This definitive new edition of The Park features eight never-before-seen images, as well as documentation of the sold-out 1980 Japanese publication, Document Koen [Document Park], that pre-dated the 2007 Hatje Cantz/Yossi Milo edition. An accompanying exhibition marking the fortieth anniversary of Kohei Yoshiyuki’s conclusion of The Park series will be held in 2020 at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.
The Park is a unique contribution to the annals of Japanese post-war photography, capturing that brief, weird liminal period of the country’s history, its awkward adolescence between the bleak sixties, a decade of loss and defeat, and the eighties, when Japan once again seemed on the verge of ruling the world. Kohei Yoshiyuki reveals a hidden city at night, where inside the folds of darkness couples and groups are released from life’s constraints. Onlookers hiding in bushes, lovers, and off-stage participants are all caught in flagrante by his camera. © Yossi Milo Gallery