There is perhaps no other contemporary Japanese photographer who has so passionately confronted love in all its varieties as much as Araki Nobuyoshi. Although the relationship with his wife Yoko had served as a driving force for his practice, it was indeed her untimely death that had strongly urged him to more profoundly pursue his life with photography. Araki had continued to photograph the vase of lilies that his wife had placed on a table on their balcony before her death (flowers are a consistent motif of Araki’s works), further pointing his lens up towards the sky to gaze at the heavens where her spirit presides, leading to the conception of the first of many “sky scenes.” In Sentimental Journey (1971), his privately published documentation of their honeymoon, Araki described his own works as, “my love and my determination as a photographer.” The images featured here were later brought together with the series Winter Journey that capture the final moments he shared with his wife, the sublimating manifestation of which, is Sentimental Journey / Winter Journey (Shinchosha 1991)

Araki’s “scandalous” nudes and bondage works have often caused a stir, yet at the base of his entire oeuvre is a stark awareness of death that conversely instill his works with such intense sensations of life. Adopting the title “mad old photographer,” after ukiyo-e artist Hokusai who referred to himself as a “mad old painter,” Araki continues to actively engage in taking photographs despite overcoming prostate cancer and losing sight in his right eye due to a retinal artery obstruction. Working with 6×7 positive film, his recent works have entailed what he describes as, “spontaneously placing down things I like and photographing them.” On this occasion marking its first presentation in Japan, are works that had been featured in last year’s exhibition A Desktop Paradise (Taka Ishii Gallery Photography Paris), comprising of photographs that have been taken in this manner in addition to a selection new works from the series. Perhaps heaven embracing hell and sadness that comes with love, is indeed that which constitutes Araki’s ideal “paradise.”

Nobuyoshi Araki
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Araki Nobuyoshi graduated with a degree in Photography and Printing Technology from Chiba University before working at the photographic department of the Japanese advertising company Dentsu. In 1964, he received the 1st Taiyo Prize for Satchin, and in 1971 he self-published Sentimental Journey, a photo-diary of him and his wife Yoko’s honeymoon. Ever since he has developed a unique sense of expression that convey both extremes of life and death within the context of his subjects that range from flowers and nudes, bondage, sky scenes, the streets of Tokyo, to his beloved cat, making him one of Japan’s most acclaimed photographers. Among many other honors he has received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Arts (2008) and the 54th Mainichi Art Award Special Prize (2012).