Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole

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On entering the exhibition on the museum’s second floor, the outspoken, incendiary side of Araki is in full view as one moves down a darkened hallway adorned with rope knots suggestive of kinbaku-bi (Japanese rope bondage art) to confront a lone spot-lit photograph of a suspended, bound kimono-clad woman with her legs splayed, her genitals barely covered by a flower. Conscious of their audience, the curators at the Museum of Sex are literally roping in the viewer’s attention with the most sensational work before slowly unfurling a more nuanced reading of Araki. Nobuyoshi Araki, KaoRi Love (Diptych), 2007

Arts editor Alice Nicolov emphasizes the fact that Araki "grew up in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan," and that these events went on to "permeate the photographer's documentation of everyday life". Prior to Tokyo Radiation, he had experimented with the effects of extremely high temperatures on the photographic development process in his 1995 series Shukei (Last Scenery) and his 2003 series ABCD. Exposing these images to high temperatures during development caused them to degrade and warp, as if they too had been victims of radiation. 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. 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. In the middle of his career, Araki produced an extensive series of photographs of bondage, specifically kinbaku, literally "the beauty of tight binding", which was a formal system of ritualistic bondage developed during the Edo period (1603-1867) from a method used for binding criminals and prisoners. In this image the tight ropes restrict and frame the breasts and nipples of the model, who looks across the image and away from the camera. Whilst sexually charged, the image is also aesthetically interesting, with the shadows of the ropes and disturbed clothing further marking the skin of the model and her disheveled hair disrupting the stereotype of an immaculately formal and composed Japanese courtesan. Whilst the woman in the image does not appear to be in pain, her expression is ambiguous, and does not suggest sexual excitement or enthusiastic participation, a factor which complicates the relationship of the viewer to the action represented. This ambiguity is particularly complicated when seen within a context of the excessive sexualization and infantilization of Japanese women that characterizes much pornography. This image is one of Araki's favorite photos of Yoko, and features in both Sentimental Journey and Sentimental Journey / Winter Journey. For Araki, it is particularly resonant in the way its composition almost seemed to foretell her coming death. He explained that "In Japan we say that you cross the Sanzu River when you depart to the 'other world'. I had no intention of taking a picture like that, so I feel that maybe God or someone made me take that picture. Her posture is like that of a fetus. Also, in the area where I grew up, we rest the deceased on rush mats. She happened to be sleeping on a rush mat. All by coincidence, it was all there." Despite Araki being most frequently discussed in regard to his erotic/pornographic photo work, his Sentimental Journey is widely considered to be one of the most important Japanese photobooks. Curator Maggie Mustard calls his relationship with Yoko "the nucleus of his most iconic work."Alessandra Turra (December 30, 2014), Nobuyoshi Araki Lenses Bottega Veneta Campaign Women's Wear Daily. Japanese photography critic and historian Iizawa Kōtarō explains that "Sentimental Journey is structured like a shishōsetsu, or 'I-novel,' sometimes called a 'personal novel,' a Japanese literary form in which the first-person narrator delves deep into the intricacies of personal relationships. [...] The photographs in Sentimental Journey function as the text of an 'I-novel' might, delicately stitching together the story of the artist's relationship with a close other. He would later dub the technique shishashin, rendered in English as 'I-photography' or 'personal photography.' The form went on to become one of the important currents running through Japanese photographic expression." Araki himself asserted, "I believe it is the 'I-novel' that is the very closest artistic form to photography.

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. In addition to the quality of his work, Araki also insists on the value of the quantity of images he produces, reflecting his prolific work ethic. Whilst this can make his work difficult to quantify or accurately survey, the sheer volumes of photographs, videos, photobooks, and other material he produces has its own significance, reflecting the depth and centrality of his practice to his life. He suggests that, rather than individual works, it is the spread of images extending throughout his life that is significant, echoing the repeating and never-ending qualities of a Buddhist mandala. 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 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] 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.

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Araki became better known to an international audience through his participation in Neue Fotografie aus Japan at the Kulturhaus der Stadt, Graz, Austria, in 1977. This major exhibition profiled the wave of new photography emerging from post-war Japan, including work by Araki, Daidō Moriyama, Akihide Tamura, and Yoshihiro Tatsuki. It was a major hit in Austria, attracting large audiences and exposing European art to the new perspectives of artists in the re-emerging global economy of Japan. Whilst Araki's work was recognized as explicit, critics and curators in the US and Europe positioned it as part of a vanguard of new subjectivism in Japanese photography rather than merely pornography, greatly increasing his profile in the international art scene.

Araki's series Erotos (1993) poetically blends the two major driving forces behind his work, love (with Eros being the ancient Greek personification of love, desire, and passion), and death ( Thanatos being the ancient Greek personification of Death). Unsurprisingly, all of the images are highly erotic, with some, including this photograph, presenting explicit scenes of nudity and sexual congress, and others (such as close-up images of blooming or decaying flowers and overripe fruit) alluding more subtly to sex, sexual organs, and death. Extreme close-ups and careful framing to echo or present genitalia are characteristic of Araki's practice during this period, with the side-on purse of a mouth appearing at first glance to be an anus, or an extreme close-up of a vagina placed alongside a raw oyster in its shell, drawing graphic and explicit attention to their similarity in shape and texture. 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. Frank, Priscilla (February 21, 2018). "Will Nobuyoshi Araki Be Photography's Last Legendary Dirty Old Man? (NSFW)". The Huffington Post. Araki's work has been legally controversial, with many of his images flaunting Japanese obscenity restrictions on the showing of pubic hair, for example. Despite public outcry, political condemnation, and police interventions, Araki refuses to modify his practice or desist from making his work. This defiance has consistently been positioned as a commentary on Japanese society and a challenge to the hypocrisy of censorship laws and other sexual repression. His practice therefore occupies a unique position where it is recognized as a vastly significant artistic export for contemporary Japan, but also a controversial and occasionally illegal body of work at odds with the establishment. In other words, people wanted something new but that wasn’t broadly provided by the mainstream realm. Thus, as the study puts it, “People subjectively project and act to change the situation of sexuality.” A revolution may not have occurred to a wholesale degree, but mindsets had changed, and the Glory Hole establishments almost became the subversive manifestation of this newfound desire.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."

a b c Shiraishi, Sakiko (April 25, 2018). "#MeToo Japan: What happened when women broke their silence". BBC News . Retrieved May 6, 2018. In this regard, Araki’s bold work is an empowering expose of women defying objectification. “Women? They are Gods,” he once said, and as such, he rendered them with a fine art brush even in the gaudy world of gritty urban life. This juxtaposition is a fascinating feat within his work, placing a sense of objectification and normality alongside power and Venus-like interplay. 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. 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. 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]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. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco [30] In 2004, an American director, Travis Klose, released a documentary about Araki called Arakimentari, which discusses the artist's lifestyle and work.