John Yang at Spritz3000

John Yang
(b. 1933, Suzhou, China–d. 2009, New York City)

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

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.

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

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

Trained as an architect, Yang 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 in photographer’s hand

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.

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

Waiting for light that revealed the garden’s structure, Yang 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

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

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

Innisfree’s design was deeply influenced by the Chinese “cup garden” tradition, in which a single view is curated to encapsulate the spirit of a larger landscape. Yang worked with this concept in mind, creating photographs that serve as their own cup gardens—self-contained yet suggestive of an unseen whole.