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‘I inevitably feel that I want to do whatever I’m not allowed to do. Art’s all about seeing how much of the real world you can really expose and bring to light.’ – Nobuyoshi ArakiOne of Japan’s most celebrated living photographers – and certainly its most controversial – Nobuyoshi Araki has published some three hundred books over the past forty-five years, testifying to an inexhaustible and singular creative vision. Often explicitly erotic in content, Araki’s taboo-breaking photographs probe the boundaries between public and private, society and the individual, fact and fiction. ‘My point of departure as a photographer was love,’ he wrote in the preface to his privately published 1971 collection Sentimental Journey, an intimate document of his honeymoon with his wife Yoko; ever since, his work has claimed an intensely autobiographical quality that is compellingly destabilised by its artistic elements of staging and artificial arrangement. Araki himself has compared his practice with the Japanese first-person form of the ‘I-novel’ in that it takes the artist’s own life and outlook as a central subject, and his genre of ‘I-photography’ has had a profound impact on younger Japanese photographers, particularly in the 1990s. His rich visual vocabulary draws from the erotic ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo era as much as the contemporary imagery and fetishism of modern Tokyo, and is shot through with an unerring and sensitive eye for composition, form and beauty. In or out of the frame, whether exploring Ginza’s sexual underworld or shooting a sensuous close-up of a flower, Araki’s approach is consistently visceral, arresting and innovative, and his instantly recognisable images have garnered an international cult following.

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI (B. 1940)

Untitled, from Colourscapes, 1991

Details

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI (B. 1940)
Untitled, from Colourscapes, 1991
Cibachrome print
signed in silver ink (image)
image: 34 ¼ x 27 in. (87 x 68.6 cm.)
sheet: 41 x 30 ½ in. (104.1 x 77.5 cm.)

Provenance

The artist.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

Nobuyoshi Araki, Araki by Araki: The Photographer’s Personal Selection, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2003, p. 276.
Nobuyoshi Araki, Self Life Death, Phaidon, London, 2005, p. 322.
Nobuyoshi Araki, Araki, Taschen, Cologne, 2007, p. 25 and cover.

Special notice

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