ARTIST OF THE WEEK

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI

Tokyo Comedy, Nobuyoshi Araki, 1997

Kaori, Nobuyoshi Araki, 2004-2008

"I think that all the attractions in life are implied in women. There are many essential elements: beauty, disgust, obscenity, purity ... much more than one finds in nature. In woman, there is sky and sea. In woman, there is the flower and the bud ...

A photographer who doesn't photograph women is no photographer, or only a third-rate one. Meeting a woman anywhere teaches you more about the world than reading Balzac. Whether it be a wife, a woman encountered by happenstance, or a prostitute, she will teach you about the world. In fact I build my life on meeting women and I have hardly read a book since primary school."

-Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki is a worldly known Japanese photographer who takes photos of women in very erotic and almost borderline pornographic poses. Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1940 and that is where he lives and works today. His work has been shown all throughout Europe and in Tokyo, Japan.
In his photographs, the setting is always taken place in Japan, a place that is familiar to him. He never travels to places he has never been to for his photos but rather stays in his hometown in Tokyo. Growing up in Minowa, Japan on the outskirts of Taito-ku in the northeastern part of Tokyo, he was raised in a neighborhood where there were prostitutes. As a young child this is where he played and where his work started. When looking at his photographs for the first time one may think that he has an obsession or a fetish for bondage because the woman in many of his photographs are naked and tied up in rope. But that is not the case. Although the women in his photos are erotically tied up, according to his interview with Jerome Sans he states,"Kinbaku (knots with ropes) are different from bondage. I only tie up a woman's body because I know I cannot tie up her heart. Only her physical parts can be tied up. Tying up a woman becomes an embrace."
In some of his photos, the woman in the photographs are situated with a plastic toy, either a dinosaur, or a snake. These plastic toys are placed gently on her body or placed next to her. The toy represents Araki's alter ego, his desire to lie next to the woman and be part of his erotic fantasy scenes.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, Hokusai, c.1820

His work seems as though it is inspired by the Japanese erotic woodblock prints, Shunga. During the Edo period, shunga prints were very popular. It expressed heterosexual and homosexual sexual positions, as well as a wide range of fetishes. They also depicted an idealized contemporary urban life in a erotically and fantastical way. The rich, and poor, men and women mostly enjoyed these prints.

In his more recent works, Araki has been taking photographs of flower buds from a close up distance. His floral photos are almost vaginal and quite similar to Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings. Both his floral and women photographs are very elegant and it shows a man's fantasy desire.