"Nobuyoshi Araki (b.1940) is a celebrated and controversial Japanese photographer whose work revolves around female eroticism and his fascination with his birthplace of Tokyo, Japan. With his notoriously provocative images, Araki has been involved in both scandals of attempted censorship and the subject of much controversial attention from critics and the press. Other important themes that motivate Araki’s work include the endless cycle of life and death, and the exploration of this precarious relationship. Since the inception of his practice in the 1960s, Araki has become one of his country’s most eminent and prolific photographers, having published over 450 photobooks of his works at the time of writing.

...Nobuyoshi Araki’s works demonstrate a passion for vibrant colours and intense black and white photography. Inspired by Japanese traditions, both ancient and more modern, Araki’s influences include the Japanese art of Shunga, which reached its apex in the Edo period with infamous artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, as well as more unconventional signifiers of Japanese culture such as Godzilla-esque monsters, and modern Tokyo culture. Araki’s models also often wear the traditional Japanese kimono. In the photographer’s work, this traditional Japanese dress is intriguingly juxtaposed against the erotic posing of the models who wear them. These photographs are intimate depictions of sensuous subjects, as well as a documentation of everyday life in modern Japan.

Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940) is from Tokyo, Japan. Araki’s works are part of numerous significant public collections including that of the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. Important photobooks have included Sentimental Journey, 1971, Tokyo Lucky Hole, 1985, and Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, 1991. One of his most recent projects was To the Past, 2012, which incorporates many of the artist’s black and white photographs from 1979 until 2011. Nobuyoshi Araki’s photographs have won many important awards, including the aforementioned 1964 prize for Satchin, the 1990 Shashin-no-kai prize from the Photographic Society of Japan, the 1991 7th Higashjkawa Prize, the 1994 Japan Inter-Design Forum Grand Prix, and most recently the 2008 Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Arts."-artuner