Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki, born in Tokyo in 1940, is one of Japan’s most renowned photographers. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970, when he was a Dentsu employee he borrowed the company’s printer and xeroxed his own photos in limited editions - what became his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, distributed to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. Araki is most well known for photographs of women bound according to the ancestral rules of Kinbaku – the Japanese art of bondage – a practice dating back to the 15th century. Araki has divided opinion but extreme technical mastery remains influential in many creative fields, including photography, film and fashion.

Araki belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the 1960s whilst Japan was experiencing radical economic growth and urbanisation as a result of post-war recovery. Photography was evolving rapidly both in its traditional guises such as photojournalism and advertising as an art. The societal transformations, cultural shifts and overt commercialism influenced him, and can be seen throughout his work; for example, karaoke bars, Japanese toys and Tokyo street scenes often feature. He likewise often reflects Japanese traditions, in both historical and stylised references, e.g. Kinbaku. The women in his pictures, although not in traditional scenes, are usually Japanese, wearing traditional dress.

Araki has published over 450 books to date, including some of the most important photobooks of the 20th century; Sentimental Journey, Tokyo Lucky Hole, Winter Journey and Shino. Likewise, he has created films and photographed artists in the likes of Lady Gaga and Björk. Araki’s photography has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris and Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, and the recent Breasts exhibition at Palazzo Franchetti on the occasion of La Biennale in Venice, with works residing in many significant public and private collections including the Tate Modern, London and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, Albertina Modern Museum in Vienna and Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto or the most recent Artelli’s homage to the photographer on the occasion of his 84th birthday at Cement in Hong Kong.