Music + Photography + ‘Discommunication’

I first met the Japanese street photographer Yoshi Yubai back in late 2022 at the apartment of V. Vale in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. Vale is the founder of the storied publisher RE/Search Publications. I happened to notice a synthesizer on a table in Vale’s living room, and learned it belonged to his wife, Marian Wallace. As is inevitable, talk turned to music, and Yubai and I bonded over mutual favorites. We kept in touch, and then last year, as he was putting thought into an upcoming collection of his work, he asked if I would write the essay for it. The book was published recently by Landslide, which is a Sydney, Australia, imprint run by Jake Wotherspoon. The book made its debut at the recent San Francisco Art Book Fair. Both Yubai and Wotherspoon were in attendance, and I spent several days during the fair at their table. The pervasive theme in Yubai’s recent work, a few reproductions of which appear below, is “discommunication,” a concept of his that serves as the…