Shot in three Tokyo parks during the early seventies, The Park is a series of black and white photographs capturing couples meeting up for clandestine trysts and, more provocatively, the voyeurs who came out to watch them. First exhibited in 1979 at Komai Gallery in Tokyo, the uproar surrounding his methods caused these photographs to be hidden from the public for the next 28 years.

Mr. Yoshiyuki first stumbled upon this hidden world while photographing skyscrapers in front of Chuo Park in Shinjuku at night when he witnessed a couple having sex and quickly discovered an entire scene of young lovers—and their peepers. He soon returned with an inconspicuous 35mm camera, a filtered flash and infrared film, and began shooting these hetero- and homosexual couplings, along with their spectators lurking in the bushes.

What is particularly striking about this series of photographs is not the graphic nature of the sexual acts portrayed, which are usually obscured by other figures or occur out of frame, but the densely packed tableaux of voyeurs who crowd in on the couples and sometimes attempt to join in.

The exhibition also includes photographs from Yoshiyuki’s 1978 companion project, Love Hotel, a group of video stills pulled from unerased videotapes made by clients of one of Japan’s infamous rooms-by-the-hour hotels. The resulting pictures are grainy abstractions of faceless, nameless people caught, mid-act, in lovemaking.

Kohei Yoshiyuki was born in 1946 in Japan, where he currently lives and works. Photographs from The Park series have been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Modern Art (New York), North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Catherine Opie (American, born 1961) created inkjet prints from scans of 7x17-inch negatives of the mini-malls that characterize Los Angeles's automobile culture.

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao (Taiwanese, born 1977) digitally combined color film negatives into seamless inkjet prints for his Habitat 7 project, which traces the route of the New York subway from Queens to Manhattan. By layering hand-cut chromogenic prints made in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, during the summer solstice, Soo Kim (American, born South Korea, 1969) achieved the three-dimensional effect of a semitransparent city.

The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Stravinsky: Danses concertantes     
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 2     
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto  Details Listen
Mozart: Symphony No. 36 in C, K. 425 ("Linz") 

Saint Louis Symphony
David Robertson, conductor
Gil Shaham, violin 

Sibelius: King Kristian II Suite   
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor
Lindberg: Chorale  
Elgar: Enigma Variations

Los Angeles Philharmonic 
Robin Ticciati, conductor 
Lars Vogt, piano 

Maria Callas: A Woman, a Voice, a Myth, an impressive collection of Maria Callas’ historic stage costumes, jewels, rare documents, books and letters gathered over many years by Bruno Tosi, President of the Associazione Maria Callas, as well as photographs lent by the Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy, are on view at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in an installation created by Barton Myers Associates and Sussman/Prejza & Co. The show also includes a special screening of the documentary BIOGRAPHY®: Maria Callas courtesy of the BIO. channel. Part of the exhibition will then travel to Venice, Italy to be installed in the soon to be inaugurated Maria Callas Museum at Scuola del Cristo, San Marcuola-Cannaregio.

The show opens concurrently with the book release of The heart of The Young Maria Callas, a previously unpublished diary, full of her dreams as a young woman and complimented by the reminisces of friends who knew her well through her triumphs and struggles.

James Conlon, LA Opera’s Richard Seaver Music Director, will give a special lecture (by invitation only): Maria Callas and Richard Wagner: A Surprising Couple, on 15 March 2010. Bruno Tosi comments, “As incredible as it may seem, Maria Callas owes everything to Richard Wagner, dating back to a dark period of her extraordinary career. She attained critical success at 25 with her great performance as Isolde from Tristan and Isolde at La Fenice Theater in Venice on December 30, 1947.” Following the lecture, Mr. Conlon will receive the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding lifelong activity and dedication to the arts. Conlon says, “Maria Callas was already one of the heroines of my youth when I had the great fortune to meet her in the final year of my studies at the Juilliard School. Having watched me rehearse a production of La Bohème, she recommended to the president that I replace the conductor who had withdrawn. Her intervention at a critical moment brought about the break, which in essence initiated my professional life. Her impact on my life, both artistic and personal, has been immense.”