__notoc__ is a Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 photographer who attracted much attention in 1979 with his exhibition

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

 "Kōen" 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 in sexual activities in Shinjuku

Shinjuku Central Park

Shinjuku Central Park is a small green area located in western Shinjuku, Nishi-Shinjuku, 2-chome, Tokyo, Japan. The park is bordered by Honnnan Dori or Kita Dori to the north, Junisha Dori to the west, Suido Dori or Minami Dori to the south, and Koen Dori to the east...

 and Yoyogi

Yoyogi Park

is one of the largest parks in Tokyo, Japan located adjacent to Harajuku Station and Meiji Shrine in Shibuya.What is now Yoyogi Park was the site of the first successful powered aircraft flight in Japan, on December 19, 1910, by Captain Yoshitoshi Tokugawa, after which it became an army parade ground...

 parks (both in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

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

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

 and infrared

Infrared

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...

 flashbulbs. Gerry Badger

Gerry Badger

Gerald David "Gerry" Badger is a writer about, and curator of photography, and a photographer.The two volumes of The Photobook: A History, which Badger co-wrote with Martin Parr, won the 2006 book award for photography from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation...

 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

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, Museum of Contemporary Photography

Museum of Contemporary Photography

The Museum of Contemporary Photography was founded in 1984 by Columbia College Chicago. It is well known for an active program and curating which discovers many emerging and mid-career artists...

 (Chicago), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and North Carolina Museum of Art

North Carolina Museum of Art

The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, featuring paintings and sculpture representing 5,000 years of artistic work from antiquity to the present. The museum features more than 40 galleries as well as more than a dozen works of art in its Museum Park...

 (Raleigh).

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.

Books by Yoshiyuki

• Dokyumento: Kōen . Sebun Mukku 4. Tokyo: Sebun-sha, 1980.
• Tōsatsu! Sunahama no koibito-tachi: Uwasa no rabu airando sennyū satsueiki . Sandē-sha, 1983. ISBN 4-88203-022-5.
• Middonaito fōkasu: Mayonaka no sekigaisen tōsatsu . Tokyo: Tokuma, 1989. ISBN 4-19-503985-4
• Yoshiyuki Kōhei shashinshū: Sekigai kōsen . Tokyo: Hokusōsha, 1992. ISBN 4-938620-36-7.

Literature

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

External links

• "Down in the park: Yoshiyuki Kohei's nocturnes". English translation of an interview of Yoshiyuki by Nobuyoshi Araki
  Nobuyoshi Araki
  is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname .-Life and career:Araki was born in Tokyo, studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko 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.