Kohei Yoshiyuki Kohei Yoshiyuki’s pictures of the nighttime activities in two Tokyo parks in the early 1970s are among the strangest photographs ever made. It’s as if the photographer has entered into the mind of a dreamer and recorded its wayward, flickering apparitions before they fled back into the deep subconscious. Perhaps Yoshiyuki himself is the dreamer—a sleepwalker stumbling on a private moment and, instead of turning away, becoming mesmerized, like a child at the primal scene. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that his pictures, with their shimmering auras and smudged shadows, don’t just exist on film, but remain seared indelibly on his brain. - Vince Aletti

Kohei Yoshiyuki

Kohei Yoshiyuki’s pictures of the nighttime activities in two Tokyo parks in the early 1970s are among the strangest photographs ever made. It’s as if the photographer has entered into the mind of a dreamer and recorded its wayward, flickering apparitions before they fled back into the deep subconscious. Perhaps Yoshiyuki himself is the dreamer—a sleepwalker stumbling on a private moment and, instead of turning away, becoming mesmerized, like a child at the primal scene. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that his pictures, with their shimmering auras and smudged shadows, don’t just exist on film, but remain seared indelibly on his brain.

- Vince Aletti