The Walther Collection

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Araki, Nobuyoshi

Biography

Japanese, b. 1940; lives and works in Tokyo

Details

Few photographers have explored the psychological and emotional implications of sequential photography with the intensity of Nobuyoshi Araki. His first major work, Sentimental Journey, from 1972, was an explicit daily coverage of his honeymoon and sex life with his new wife, Yoko Aoki. Since then Araki has become widely known for both the frank sexuality of his photographs and his prolific picture-making. (He has produced over 400 photobooks.) 

For him, photography is diaristic and inextricable from life itself. Araki has said, "For me, taking photographs can be just like keeping a diary. During the 1980s, everyone was taking pictures like a diary." This extended series, 101 works for Robert Frank (Private Diary), was created between July 1992 and December 1993, three years after the death of his beloved wife. Although the highly personal series features a variety of women in erotic and revealing poses, the group as a whole intersperses a wide range of subjects including still lifes, interiors with his cat, landscapes, shots of the sky, and street scenes. All of these visual experiences, including the erotic imagery, are presented almost casually, an attitude that underscores the poetic banality that Araki prizes, and that he finds reflected in the photographs of Robert Frank.

Artworks by Araki, Nobuyoshi

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