The Gaze

 Kohei Yoshiyuki's 'The Park' Series


Yoshiyuki's voyeristic shots of the series tie in with 'the gaze'. The woman is desired by the men around her and seem to be focusing all their attention on her.
'My intention was to capture what happened in the parks, so I was not a real 'voyeur' like them. But I think, in a way, the act of taking photographs itself is voyeuristic somehow. So I may be a voyeur, because I am a photographer'. He quotes which then asks the question is he part of the gaze?
This series 'The Park' features shots taken in Tokyo, Japan of picture having sex whilst strangers watch. This park was used for anyone wanting to participate in such activities and couldn't afford a room at a love hotel. Kohei looked out upon voyeurs who watched and sometimes touched other couples. Sex before marriage was frowned upon and thats why some couples went to park at night to make love. 
'He used a 35-millimetre camera with infrared film and a filtered flashbulb, allowing him to take photographs in the dark without hardly anyone noticing.'
My favourite was how he exhibited the project by turning off all the lights in the room and having the viewers go around with a torch to have a look at them, a relevant approach to the whole subject matter and to let the viewers see what e actually had to go through to capture these images. Yoshiyuki destroyed the prints short after the exhibition and returned to work as a professional photographer, I think that he was under pressure from what he had taken which made him change his mind about what he has created.