Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1946.
He moved to Tokyo with the goal of becoming a professional photographer, and after working as a camera shop clerk and darkroom technician, he began working as a photographer for a foreign news agency in 1971. He started working as a freelancer in 1978.
In the early 1970s, Yoshiyuki gained attention for his photographs taken using infrared film and infrared strobes, capturing couples gathering in Tokyo parks at night and the people peeking at them. In 1972, some of these photographs were published in the magazine Shukan Shincho, generating considerable buzz. In his photography, Yoshiyuki built relationships with the people peeking at the parks while frequenting them, and by being accepted as a participant in the same space, he was able to record their scenes from his own unique perspective.
The photographs taken in Shinjuku parks from 1971 to 1973, and in Gaienmae park in 1979, were published in 1980 as the photobook "Document: Parks." At his solo exhibition held at Komai Gallery in Tokyo in 1979, he employed an exhibition method in which visitors viewed life-size prints in a darkened venue using flashlights, attracting attention as an attempt to share the experience of "peeking" with the audience.
Since the mid-2000s, "Document: Park" has been re-evaluated among overseas photobook collectors and was introduced internationally as the English-language photobook "The Park." In 2007, his first solo exhibition abroad was held at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, and since then, his work has been exhibited in various locations around the world.
Yoshiyuki's work, which highlights the multi-layered relationship of "seeing/being seen" in the act of voyeurism, the relationship between photographer and subject, and the relationship between photograph and viewer, is highly regarded internationally as an extremely unique form of expression within Japanese photography of the 1970s.
His major photobooks include "Documentary Park" (1980), "Kohei Yoshiyuki Photobook: Infrared Rays" (1992), and "Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park" ( Hatje Cantz/Yossi Milo Gallery, 2007).
