Kohei Yoshiyuki (and nine other reasons I love Yossi)

from the series The Park, 1973, by Kohei Yoshiyuki

I’ve made a point of not writing about the art business on this blog. But I have to make an exception for Yossi Milo. Here are just ten of the reasons I love Yossi:

1. Because he shows one of my favorite established photographers: Nicolas Nixon.
2. Because he shows one of my favorite young photographers: Allesandra Sanguinetti
3. Because he doesn’t care about labels. For all of his success with Loretta Lux and Simen Johan, he still shows documentary work.
4. Because on October 25 he’ll be debuting Taj Forer’s sweet and understated photographs.
5. Because he included one of my pictures in his June Bride exhibition
6. Because he’s always good to the Minneagraphers (Katherine Turczan, David Goldes)
7. Because he shows my friends Lise Sarfati and Eirik Johnson.
8. Because he is just so sweet.
9. Did I mention he shows Nicolas Nixon?
10. Because he keeps unearthing great stuff. The latest is the work of Kohei Yoshiyuki. Taken with infrared film and flash in various Tokyo parks, these pictures show people gathering for furtive sexual encounters, both heterosexual and homosexual. More strange than the sex are the spectators:

from the series The Park, 1973, by Kohei Yoshiyuki

Along with exhibiting Yoshiyuki’s work (September 6 – October 20), Yossi will be publishing his book, The Park, this fall. The original version of the book, Document Park, was published in 1980 with an introduction by Nobuyoshi Araki:

In The Photobook, A History, Vol. II, Parr and Badger write that Document Park “is a brilliant piece of social documentation, catching perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo.”

March Madness

I’m working on my Final Four selection but can’t seem to get past Nixon vs. Mann in the first round. Who is in your Final Four?

Nixon

Last week there was some discussion on this blog about the randomness of great pictures. What makes a picture great? Who knows? But you know it when you see it. And this week I saw a real doozy:

image by Nicholas Nixon from the series Patients

FAQ: Why do you use an 8×10 camera?

For the record, I don’t always use this camera. But my two published books, Sleeping by the Mississippi and NIAGARA were indeed produced with an 8×10. At one point I looked at the photographers I loved and there happened to be an unusual number who use this format (Nicholas Nixon, Sally Mann, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Roger Mertin, Joel Meyerowitz). Since it worked for all of these people I figured it was worth a try. And as it turns out there is something special about the format. Beyond the resolution and tonal purity of the negative, the 300mm lens renders the world in a really unique way. But what I really love is the viewing process. The image on the ground glass is just so beautiful. While the format is pretty impractical, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give up on the view.