Yasuhiro Yoshioka - The Paradise of Sodom - 1971

The Paradise of Sodom

Yasuhiro Yoshioka
Haga Bookshop / 1971 / Japanese / 185*258*15
The upper part of the dust jacket has tears.

Sodom's Paradise is a collection of photographs by Japanese photographer Yoshioka Yasuhiro, who debuted at the Yomiuri Independents Exhibition in 1961 but was forced to withdraw his works from the exhibition on the grounds that they were 'wisecracks.' He was an artist who challenged avant-garde creation and expression through depictions of the body using strong black-and-white contrasts and collage, as if stripping away even the meaning of 'human,' and his early works were highly praised by master Man Ray. Yoshioka Yasuhiro was a standard-bearer of the avant-garde photographic art of the 1960s, alongside Hosoe Eikoh and others. This book is a collection of works published by Haga Shoten in the early 1970s and features avant-garde nudes depicting actresses such as Yoshihiro Wakabayashi, who also appeared in films by Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu. It is divided into six chapters, with a unique mix of color and black-and-white, and the stylish binding by Hironori Nagatomo, along with texts by Nagisa Oshima, Kazuko Shiraishi, and others, adds further interest.