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  ©Kozo Miyoshi

Wyandott, Michigan, alongside it’s car manufacturing industry, was a well known place for enthusiasts for it’s manufacturing of metal toys. During the 1920’s through 1950’s, Wyandotte Toys grew, peaked and vanished after being bought over in late 1950’s. Toy cars made with scrapped car metal are a favored token among collectors of “Wyandotte Toy cars”. Among these collectors is photographer Kozo Miyoshi. His collection of over 40 years include rusty discombobulated metal car bodies. The rusted toy cars enclose a memory of a long gone place and time. The roughness of the rusty metal resonates alike to the somberness of a old blues song, and the coarse skin of it’s singer. It has passed through many hands, eventually being forgotten and now rusting away. By some odd chance the wasted toys got carried into Tokyo and were rendered into these photographs. 

Kozo Miyoshi holds great importance in creating the best lighting and situation in his photographs. “For a long time I have imagined this particular photographic series. Now I finally am able to, with the ideal 16 x 20 inch camera and an ideal setting to place them in the ideal light.” The objects which were gently collected during Miyoshi’s visits to the United States and brought home to Japan as souvenirs now are given new life as gelatin silver photographs. Hereby this series “SABI” can be looked at as an extension of Miyoshi’s signature photographic mode of photographing = traveling.

Kozo Miyoshi

Born in Chiba, Japan in 1947. He graduated from the Department of Photography at Nihon University College of Art in 1971.

He began his photographic career in the 1970s and started shooting an 8×10-inch large format camera in 1981. In 2009 he upgraded to an ultra large format 16×20-inch camera which he continues to use on his travels. Miyoshi’s photographs have received international acclaim for their unique and sincere approach to his fleeting subjects.

PGI Exhibitions