Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole

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Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco [30]

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] a b c Lynne Warren (15 November 2005). Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 3-volume set. Routledge. pp.50–. ISBN 978-1-135-20536-2. Araki then worked as a commercial photographer at the Dentsu advertising agency, which he found extremely dull. He did, however, use the Dentsu facilities to further his independent photography work, even using the company's photocopier to produce one of his early photobooks, The Xerox Photo Albums (1970). He held his first solo exhibition in 1965 at Shinjuku Station Building. In 1967, Araki's father passed away. One year later, he met the woman who would become his wife whilst at work at Dentsu - essayist Yōko Aoki. Art historian Matthew Kluk notes that these two events were "pivotal" in Araki's life, writing that "Death and love would become two of the principal driving forces behind Araki's profoundly human photography." While on honeymoon with his wife and favorite muse, Yoko, in 1971, Araki bought a camera and photographed their entire trip. This image shows Yoko sleeping on a rowboat on the Yanagawa River during their honeymoon. Never one to miss an opportunity to discuss his sex life, Araki explained about the image, "It was our honeymoon so she was exhausted from all the sex." The resulting images became a series titled Sentimental Journey, one of Araki's best-known and most acclaimed works. Araki produced dozens of images, many of which were also published in Araki's 1978 photobook Yoko My Love, intended as an homage to his relationship with Yoko. In 1991, following Yoko's death from ovarian cancer the previous year, the artist published Sentimental Journey / Winter Journey, which presented images from the couple's honeymoon alongside more sorrowful images of Yoko during her illness, and even at her funeral.

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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 ]

Araki's began a prolific period of work that continued to expand his documentation of his life and muses, including Yoko, who went on to be Araki's most beloved and most photographed subject. The couple married in 1971, and Araki turned his photos of their honeymoon into the photobook Sentimental Journey (1971), which is considered one of the most important Japanese photobooks of the twentieth century. The following year, with Sentimental Journey a great success, Araki left his job at Dentsu and focused exclusively on his art. Araki was incredibly prolific, documenting his life with Yoko, flowers, nature, the city he lived in, and his pets. And, he worked extensively with magazines and models, exploring and documenting his own obsessions and experiences through the multitude of exhibitions, photobooks, and magazine articles he was producing. In 1981, Araki directed High School Girl Fake Diary ( 女高生偽日記, Jokōsei nise nikki ), a roman porno film, for the studio Nikkatsu. [10] The film was a disappointment to Araki's fans and to fans of the pink film genre. [11] Araki developed an autobiographical mode of working with images that he calls 'I-Photography' ( shi-shashin), in which his photography documents his life and the lives of those around him, recording the details and private moments they share. Nothing is off limits as a subject for the camera, with Araki even documenting his wife's deathbed. This way of working is inspired by the 'I-novel' ( shi-shōsetsu) which was prevalent in the Japanese literary scene of the early 20th century. This way of working has proven to be inspirational for subsequent generations of biographical photographers who use the medium to explore the beauty and strangeness of their own lives. Araki studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki. After they were married, Araki published a book of pictures of his wife taken during their honeymoon titled Sentimental Journey. She later died in 1990. Pictures taken during her last days were published in a book titled Winter Journey. Sex clubs, cats, rope bondage, nude women, and the bliss of newlyweds on a honeymoon are some of the most famous subjects of Nobuyoshi Araki. Probably the most famous and influential Japanese photographer of the post-war period, Araki's work is technically masterful and blurs the lines between high art, photo-biography, and pornography. His photographic practice is controversial, highly sexual, and frequently challenging to both a Western and a Japanese sense of propriety and personal expression.

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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. Sentimental Journy. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2016. ISBN 978-4-309-27700-4. Facsimile edition. With an introduction in Japanese and English by Araki. Housed in a slipcase with a postcard.