Yesterday, I just got crazy and went ahead and bought the new book (almost 5 kg!) of Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木 経惟). A single word is needed: fantastic. This guy is maybe one of the most famous japanese photographer alive, and certainly my favourite. He published over 250 books, but this special edition is one of the most complete retrospective of his work.
His style could be qualified as “special”, and many parents won’t allow their offspring to look over the 560 pages it contains, given that many of these shots could be qualified as “porn”, “fetish”, “bondage”, “sexual”, “perverted”, “insane”, and so on. However, his work should not be considered as simplistic as it seems, and without a clear understanding of the context of his shots, his own life, and his mindset. During the last 30 years he spent all his time shooting, well documenting, his everyday life. He has shot many (many many many!!!) girls, boys, animals, tall, slim, curvy, hairy, nude, shaved, in bars, beds, karaokes, dirty or expensive hotel rooms, courtesanes, geishas, toys, cats, flowers, etc… He doesn’t try to say anything, the shots and subjects in his pictures talk by themselves. In this respect, I think he’s a great documentary photographer, that will leave in mankind memory, artifacts of a unique time, a society not open to everyone, exactly in the same style as Nan Goldin, or Wolfgang Tillmans.
Copyright Nobuyoshi Araki. All rights reserved.
“Some people I know think life is sad. But these days I think the opposite. Death is sadder.” Araki
Clearly, sexuality and death is omnipresent in his work, and he argues that life and death cannot be separated, photography is life and death. They all go together and you can always see the traces of one within the other. The simplicity of his shots, the non-academic way of framing pictures, the anti-classical photography style, the simplicity of a cheap camera with an inbuilt flash is just great, adds a mental link between the viewer and the viewed. As opposed to common trends in artsy-erotic photography (e.g, Helmut Newton’s porno chic), the barrier between average males and the inaccessible, sublime models, sadistic amazons, and perverted goddesses is simply inexistent. Araki’s girls are the ones you can meet while washing a slip at the laundry, or paying your bills at the next gas station. Their are girls you see everyday but don’t even notice, real humans in flesh simply shown as they are, nothing is hidden behind layer of cosmetics.
I have always been deeply impressed by the powerfulness of his shots, and macabre (without being vulgar) mix of sexuality and death, as he always argues that sexuality can be seen in death (he says that in Contacts), and vice-versa. No wonder that orgasm is called “the little death” then… Though, this aspect might seem perverted and arguable, I think he depicts and supports very well (might not seem obvious at first sight) his vision in the series of flowers.
Copyright Nobuyoshi Araki.
Beauty in flesh
like a flower
never lives forever
Haiku improvised by me, right now…
Even if my favorite aspect of his work, the ones that make me fizz down the spine is the fantastic urban shots of the streets of Tokyo. In my opinion, no other photographer has been able to render the real spirit of japanese streets in such a realistic way, I can feel like being there, I can smell takoyaki fumes popping out in the back alleys, the music of urban chaos, the calm of these little parks with playing kids in Tokyo.
Copyright Nobuyoshi Araki.
Conclusion: great, buy this book! Also a nice link of an art review of his work here (I found it cool)!
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