John Yang — Spritz3000

John Yang
(1933–2009)

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer’s hand

Innisfree Garden, in Millbrook, New York, began as painter Walter Beck’s private estate in the 1920s, inspired by Chinese garden design. After Beck’s death, landscape architect Lester Collins distilled his vision into a sequence of “cup gardens”—self-contained landscapes revealed in turn. Yang responded to this layered history with photographs that honor the site’s intended pacing, moving from enclosure to openness. His images slow the eye, echoing the garden’s unfolding choreography of space, light, and seasonal change.

Gelatin silver print
10 × 8 in.
photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer's hand

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
platinum print; printed in 1998

The garden’s history—its transformation from a private retreat into a public space in 1960—adds another dimension to Yang’s work. His photographs, often devoid of visitors, evoke the site’s earlier solitude while acknowledging its role as a shared cultural resource. By capturing moments unmarked by human presence, Yang creates images that feel timeless, situating Innisfree within both a personal and collective memory. The result is a portrait of a place where design and nature are in perpetual dialogue.

Gelatin silver print
10 × 8 in.
photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer’s hand

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
notes in pencil in photographer’s hand on print recto

Collins shaped Innisfree’s 185 acres into a unified yet varied composition, integrating natural topography with sculpted features, lakes, and streams. His design draws on centuries-old Chinese principles, where each view is composed as though for a painting. Yang embraced this sensibility, allowing stone, water, and vegetation to become his subjects. Waiting for light that revealed the garden’s structure, he framed scenes where human intention and natural form merge, translating the site’s philosophy of harmony into still, contemplative images.

Gelatin silver print
10 × 8 in.
notes in pencil in photographer’s hand on print recto

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer’s hand

Beck and Collins envisioned Innisfree as a journey, a sequence of framed moments set within a larger landscape. Yang’s photographs mirror this experience, guiding the viewer from shaded paths to sunlit expanses, from intimate ponds to wide vistas. Trained as an architect, he brought an acute awareness of proportion and spatial rhythm, attuned to the subtle alignments that give the garden its quiet authority. His prints distill these transitions into moments of balance between permanence and flux.

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer’s hand

Gelatin silver print
8 × 10 in.
Photographer’s credit stamp on print recto and notes in pencil photographer's hand

Seasonal change was central to Yang’s engagement with Innisfree. He returned in winter for the stark silhouettes of trees and stone against snow, in spring for emergent textures, and in autumn for the long light that softened edges. This cyclical approach reflected Collins’ belief that a garden should offer new experiences year-round. Yang’s photographs bear witness to that rhythm, their tonal range and compositional clarity turning temporal variation into enduring records of the garden’s living design.