TW // Voyeurism
While wandering the stacks of Loyola's oversized/art collection during my Freshman year, I stumbled upon a simple black art book tiled The Park - Kohei Yoshiyuki. Curious, I removed it from the shelf and scanned the contents, returning absolutely baffled from what I had seen. It was a life-changing artistic experience.
Yoshiyuki's provocative and intimate photographs of individuals messing around (and watching one another mess around) in public parks in the middle of the night are the types of creative and artistic endeavors that make me question to what extent photography is truly creative. In an interview with fellow Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, Yoshiyuki even goes so far as to say "Anybody can take photographs like these", and in this case he is referring to both the setting of the pieces as well as the technology used to capture these photos.
This above was one of the main connections I made with my focus book, The Code Breaker. Sometimes, it can feel like the main tool to solving a creative problem is to reevaluate what tools are right for the job. Just as Jennifer Doudna utilized DNA synthesis machines as well as x-ray crystallography to get what she needed done, and Yoshiyuki utilized Kodak's tricolor separation filters to shoot in the dark without emitting a harsh, obnoxious light.
All of this said, it is important to point out how deeply problematic and intrusive this nature of creation can be. In the effort to shed light on voyeuristic tendencies and creepy behavior, Yoshiyuki in turn can easily become the very off-putting subject he is photographing. While his works were revolutionary for their time, crossing boundaries and breaking borders often breaks them for everyone, and we must then wrestle with questions realted to the infamous "how far is too far?"
I would love to hear comments / input from anyone who decides to look into the photo series for themselves! Have a wonderful day!
This is a fascinating topic to bring up. This reminds me of my Philosophy of Aesthetics class my sophomore year, where we discussed at a length what qualifies as art and creativity. Things like graffiti, modern art, embodied art, Photography, etc. So having this conversation is incredibly important in this creative space. Is what Kohei Yoshiyuki did a form of art or merely being at a place at a time where he caught very provocative and illicit images? Is this ART or is this merely photos that are shocking for the sake of itself? Or are those ideas not mutually exclusive? I appreciated the connection with the book, it certainly seemed that a lot of thought went into the technological aspect of this work, which proved successful considering the quality and clarity of the photos. Thank you for sharing!
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