Extract from an interview with Kohei Yoshiyuki by Nobuyoshi Araki from the September 1979 issue of Weekend Super

NA: As the genius of photography, I’d like to introduce Yoshiyuki Kohei to our readers. You created a huge sensation by taking voyeuristic photographs of people having sex, and of voyeurs – peepers – watching people having sex, with infrared film. A lot of people made a lot of noise about them, but my critique consisted of exactly one line: “These are what I call photographs” (laughter). After that we met and chatted now and then, but I haven’t seen you for quite a while. Recently I received an invitation to your solo show. I couldn’t go because I was busy, but I mentioned it to the editor of Weekend Super, and heard later that he went to see it. When I asked him about it, he said he liked the way the photographs were exhibited.

KY: I turned out all the lights in the space, and gave each visitor a flashlight. That way I was reconstructing the original settings. I also blew the photos up to life size.

NA: You recreated the original settings. Viewers went into a dark room with a flashlight and looked at the photographs? But that way, you can only see part of them.

KY: Yes, that’s how I wanted them to be viewed. I wanted people to look at the bodies in the photographs an inch at a time. I really enjoyed watching people looking at the photographs. Since the points of light were also their lines of sight, I saw things that were totally unexpected.

NA:  I heard you didn’t issue many invitations. That was a bad idea. It’s a shame you didn’t make a really spectacular gesture.

KY: I’m a coward.

NA: Cowards don’t go around spying on people and photographing them having sex. What was your motivation?

KY: It had never occurred to me to take that kind of photograph. I knew about peeping, though, and then one day I stumbled onto a scene – an incredible scene (laughter). That was when I was still an amateur. At that time, there weren’t many skyscrapers in front of Chuo Park in Shinjuku. There was a model apartment in one of them. I was walking behind it with a friend (we had just finished a shoot), when we saw something amazing!

NA: “Something.” I like your choice of words.

KY: Yes! I was shocked. They were actually fucking.

NA: They were?

KY: Yes. When I saw them, I knew this was something I had to photograph.

NA: You didn’t right then?

KY: I had my camera, but it was dark. After that I did some research. I found out that Toshiba made flashbulbs – infrared flashbulbs. Before I had a chance to use more than a few of them, they were discontinued. Then I looked around for filters, and ended up using two tricolor separation filters. After a while I heard that Kodak had some flashbulbs, so I used them. At that time, infrared flash units didn’t exist. Sunpak came out with them after I took these photos.

NA: So they’re making them now?

KY: Yes. Anybody can take photographs like these.

NA: Wow! Guess I won’t be able to have sex in dark places anymore. Are the people you photograph totally unaware of what’s going on? I’ve never used equipment like that, so I have no idea.

KY: The light flashes – a red light. I’d better not say any more (laughter).

NA: Like the lights on a passing car, from the subjects’ point of view?

KY: That’s right. Anyway, they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing that even a lot of light shouldn’t faze them.

NA: Let’s have a look at the photos. Yeah, these are amazing! Because they’re really fucking. Look at him giving it to her! You need a lot of nerve to take photographs like these. Mine are so pseudo-documentaries, so everything is staged (laughter). These days it’s the women who are aggressive. At Shinjuku Gyoen, for instance, the women are on top.

KY: I saw that sometimes, too. But I can’t photograph that. If the guy’s on the bottom, he’ll notice the camera.

NA: Look at this one!

KY: This is the real thing, too. But the guy was hopeless. He couldn’t get it up. The ambience made him self-conscious, I guess. I was right near them, listening and thinking he’d get it together. But then he said, “It’s no good” (laughter).

NA: The wonderful thing about this photograph is that it shows the peeper. It’s a self-portrait. It shows your shadow. I really like that. It’s probably strange to talk about photography theory in a context like this, but this is what a photograph is supposed to be. Oh, look, the peeper is touching her. He’s assisting. Wasn’t it hard to shoot these photographs?

KY: Well, it’s harder to photograph the peepers. But at that time, nobody ever dreamed they’d be photographed. I had a tiny camera with a flash attachment. I think it would be almost impossible to do that now.

NA: But you could do it openly, couldn’t you? Just grab one shot with your flash, and then run.

KY: I guess so. Maybe that’s the way to do it.

NA: Maybe everybody will be doing it this summer, once word about the Sunpak flash-unit spreads.

KY: I heard the company got a lot of inquiries after my show.

NA: Uh, oh!

KY: Yeah. I won’t be able to do my work (laughter).

NA: You mean nobody has ever come after you when you took photos like this?

KY: Never.

NA: Wow! Maybe you’re a Ninja.

KY: The guy who developed the Sunpak infrared strobe is a real lecher and a lot of fun.

NA: Really? He must have done a lot of fieldwork.

KY: Yes. I guess that’s where the idea came from.

NA: Lechers are the only hope for the twenty-first century. Only lechers come up with good ideas. Only lechers take good photos. So are you one, too?

KY: I think I’m completely ordinary, but I think there’s a little lecher in everyone.

NA: I guess it’s a matter of degree. I am fascinated by this topic. I like the way the legs are open here.

KY: I think she was a student – really cute. Others are much more outrageous. They get carried away.

NA: What do you mean?

KY: Once a couple walked over and laid a piece of cloth on the ground. I thought, “They’re going to do it,” and then they started fucking. The guy pulled his pants down to his knees. But most of them do it in the missionary position. Or standing up. They do it in the rain, after everyone else has left the park.

NA: That’s their chance!

KY: Right. There’s nobody around then.

NA: Why do they go to the park to fuck? Have they done it everywhere else already?

KY: I don’t think that’s why. Even if the girl isn’t thrilled about having sex there, the guy might say, “Let’s do it here.” Maybe they’ve been drinking nearby or something. But only couples who’ve had sex before fuck in a park. You can always spot them because they walk fast.

NA: Really? So you stand at the entrance watching. Then you see a couple walking fast, so you know you’ll get some shots?

KY: That’s definitely what I look for.

NA: I’m not a peeper, but I once tried to spot couples headed for love hotels [hotels that charge by the hour] at Shinjuku Station. My hunches were usually right. You can tell.

KY: I’ve never seen a couple who aren’t already having sex fuck in a park. Foreplay takes too long, and the peepers will gather around, and the opportunity is gone. They have to have had sex at least once. Even if the girl doesn’t feel like it, guys want to do it in the park. I’ve overheard their conversations.

NA: I’d like to observe sometime. We could organize a tour. Let’s do a grand tour, with you as the guide. Can you imagine a bunch of photographers filing into a park (laughter)?

KY: A photo session.

NA: So photographing them isn’t illegal?

KY: No, as long as you don’t say anything. If you keep quiet, take your photos and run, it’s okay.

NA: Really? It sounds almost criminal. You know, you could blackmail people with the photos.

KY: That’s true.

NA: So, let’s do this, all right? This summer, and make a big event of it. It’d be a shame to waste the opportunity.

KY: This summer, then!

NA: Yes, yes. Watch out, everybody. Yoshiyuki is coming (laughter).

from an article by Geoff Dyer on Thomas Ruff ‘s Nudes exhibition

I was skinning a potato when it said:
Please don’t gouge my one remaining eye!
My parer hesitated. The knob of the spud
comforted my hand-hold with its sly
ovoid, firm yet brittle as a fontanelle,
and I much enjoyed the way its cool lump
-all pulpy planes and facettings, with a starch
sheen that mildly slimed my fingers
(not to mention that tuberous smell
that lingers
like the shoulder of a clump
of creosote bushes or the violet mildew of an arch
no triumph still remembers)
- yes I like the way it occupied my pinch.

I understood at its tiny squeak
the power of pashas over the members
of their entourages. For a week,
whenever I passed, the potato would flinch.
Its one eye never slept.
I thought of the kingdoms it had crept
through under the ground, spud-
smug, amid the dust of the bones of shahs
and eunuchs, those generations of the Flood,
the Colossi and the Accursed,
the Great Hunger and the hegiras,
telemons and ostraca and worst,
immense anti-archives of dirt.

It hurt
me to do it but I scopped out its eye
an ate it and felt utterly triumphant: I
ingested all that a potato could personify.

1989 film of the Michael Clarke Company by Charles Atlas. costumes by Leigh Bowery and Mr Pearl.

The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Syntagma by VALIE EXPORT

by The Ethiopians, 1968.