Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole

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Frank, Priscilla (February 21, 2018). "Will Nobuyoshi Araki Be Photography's Last Legendary Dirty Old Man? (NSFW)". The Huffington Post.

Photography for the Afterlife. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2014. ISBN 978-4582278118. With an essay by Mario Perniola, "Araki's Hell". The work of American photographer Nan Goldin is often compared with that of Araki. After meeting in 1992, Goldin stated "I'd already heard about this wild man of Japanese photography and of his diaristic, intensely sexual work. [...] I was astounded to find a man on the other side of the planet who was working the same obsessions I was." They went on to do a number of artistic collaborations, most notably the photobook Tokyo Love: Spring 1994. Araki has also had a significant influence on younger Japanese photographers, such as Daifu Motoyuki whose 2014 photobook Project Family carries on Araki's "I-photography" approach, and Momo Okabe, who, like Araki in his younger days created a handmade photobook to present her sexually explicit photographs. Along that radical journey, Araki captured the transition of his country. “Photography is about a single point of a moment,” he said. “It’s like stopping time. As everything gets condensed in that forced instant. But if you keep creating these points, they form a line which reflects your life.” The radicalism that Araki depicts in his collected moments displays how the culture of Japan rapidly changed in the post-war bohemian boom spurred on by the boldly different bands washing ashore. Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books: Asian Cult Cinema Publications. p.196. ISBN 1-889288-52-7.

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Araki was born in Tokyo on May 25, 1940. [4] He studied film and photography at Chiba University from 1959, receiving a degree in 1963. [4] He worked at the advertising agency Dentsu, where, in 1968, he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Aoki [ Wikidata]. [4] Art career [ edit ] quality, not quantity, does the job. and curation too. trust me you don't really need a thousand images of anything, no matter how fascinating that thing is. This subversive force was largely driven by a wave of feminism in Japan. As Setsu Shigematsu opines: “In 1970, a new women’s liberation movement emerged, marking a watershed in the history of feminism in modern Japan… Unlike liberal feminism, which stresses the achievement of equality with men, radical feminism takes a broader view, emphasising women’s oppression under patriarchy as a fundamental form of human oppression that can only be relieved through comprehensive societal and cultural transformation.”

Araki's photography is technically masterful whatever its subject, with the same focus, attention, and careful framing he affords a nude body also applied to his cat (Chiro), flowers, or the city of Tokyo and its residents. Subjects are positioned as equally valid signifiers and exemplars of beauty, reimagining hierarchies of what is and isn't important to reflect on aesthetically and drawing attention to the beauty of bodies in both ordinary and extraordinary situations, whether in the streets, sheets, or underground clubs. Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Araki photographed Saskia de Brauw and Sung Jin Park in Tokyo for the brand's spring/summer 2015 campaign. [16] Controversy [ edit ] Araki has produced an extensive and extremely varied body of work (including over 500 photobooks), which has influenced subsequent photographers in nearly all genres, including street photography, documentary photography, portraiture, erotic photography, and more. According to curator Maggie Mustard, he influenced fashion photography in regard to "this aesthetic of the candid, the hip shot, the emphasis on the explicit." Arts and culture writer Alina Cohen notes that Araki's "aesthetic is instantly recognizable, whether he's capturing submissive, rope-bound women, grungy group sex in Tokyo, or eroticized flowers. [...] Over the years, Araki has become a brand." Arts editor Alice Nicolov praises his "innate technical mastery of image staging and colour." In 1992, Araki met Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker Robert Frank who was visiting Japan. The two artists bonded over their use of the camera to work through the process of grief. The same year, Araki held his first international solo exhibition, Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991 at the Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria, and also published Sentimental Journey / Winter Journey 1972-1992, which documented his relationship with his wife, from their early days of blissful young love to the challenging later years when she was struggling with her illness. a b c d Rich, Motoko (May 5, 2018). "When an Erotic Photographer's Muse Becomes His Critic". The New York Times . Retrieved May 6, 2018.

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Selvin, Claire (December 10, 2018). " 'Are You Sure Your Knowledge Is Correct?': Asian Women's Group Protests Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki in Berlin". ARTnews . Retrieved February 22, 2019. While Araki's images of bondage are often criticized by Western audiences for perpetuating misogyny and the objectification/fetishization of women, some scholars argue that the images can only be properly understood if read through the cultural lens in which they were produced. For instance, curator Lou Proud sees such images by Araki as a "celebration of women". The artist himself says he wants to "free the women's souls" by tying up their bodies. Indeed, as in this photograph. the women in the images have calm, strong, controlled expression, and do not appear afraid, humiliated, or in pain. Street Life & Home Stories.Photographs from the Goetz Collection - Sammlung Goetz". Goetz Collection. Archived from the original on 2018-03-02 . Retrieved 2018-03-02. It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Word spread that the waitresses wore no panties under their miniskirts. Similar establishments popped up across the country. Men waited in line outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a panty-free young woman. In October 2013, Araki lost vision in his right eye due to a retinal artery obstruction. The 74-year-old artist used the experience as an inspiration to exhibit Love on the left eye, held on 21 June 2014 at Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo. [15]