Avant-Garde Sixties / Yasuhiro Yoshioka, 1999

avant-garde sixties

Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Shinchosha/1999/Japanese/200*150*28

A collection of photographs by Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka, who made his debut at the Yomiuri Independents Exhibition in 1961, but was forced to withdraw his works from the exhibition on the grounds that they were “wisecracks,” and published his first book at his own expense in 1962, mainly consisting of those that were removed from the exhibition. He was an artist who challenged avant-garde experimental expression through depictions of the body using strong black-and-white contrasts and collage, etc. His early works were highly praised by the master photographer Man Ray. He has since made a name for himself with still photographs of artists such as Kobo Abe, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Nagisa Oshima, as well as his radical erotic works modeled on sex symbol Yoshihiro Wakabayashi, and along with Eikoh Hosoe, Yoshioka was a standard bearer of avant-garde photography in the 1960s. This 300-page book introduces Yoshioka’s works in chronological order, including “The Works of Yasuhiro Yoshioka (1st),” “Atlas of Human Sex,” “Beast Love,” “Yoshihiro Wakabayashi,” “Sodom’s Paradise,” and “One, Two, Three,” and includes over 100 pages of the photographer’s own “memorandum” text. The book is a 300-page work that includes a “memorandum” text by the photographer himself.