Coney Island, 1938

"In the 1930s, [Yasuo] Kuniyoshi abandoned his 8 x 10 frame camera, which he had used for commercial photography. With the advent of the Leica 35mm in 1935, the practice of taking photographs became a necessary tool for the advancement, but not the usurpation of painting. At least, not at first. For Kuniyoshi the hiearchy of mediums was superfluous in a time when photography was yet considered to be a fine art. In his eyes, painting and photography simply coexisted and 'accommodated' one another. Having come to America in 1906 from Okayama, Japan, Kuniyoshi's story was one of a synthesis of European Modernism, Japanese Art, and American Folk Art. And, although he did not exhibit his photographs in his lifetime, he did receive the Leica Prize...Kuniyoshi's leisure photographs, of Coney Island taken from the boardwalk, were flattened picture planes that informed his paintings as they belied their Oriental influences." (K. Johnson, Six American Painters and the Photograph, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2001).