Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki – The connection between art, fetish, and pornography

Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Minowa in Tokyo on 25 May 1940. The son of a shoe seller, he studied photography and film art at Chiba University from 1959 to 1963 and then went on to work in advertising. Only in the mid-1960s did he begin to concentrate exclusively on photography, noting the photo artists Brassaï, Jean-Luc Godard and Henri Cartier-Bresson as role models. Nobuyoshi Araki became famous and reached an international audience with his bondage nude photographs. For many viewers, the unique appeal of these pictures lay in the hitherto unique combination of pornographic explicitness and artistic expression. Although Japan cultivates a somewhat different cultural understanding of erotic art to that in the Western world, Araki’s depictions repeatedly came into conflict with the authorities. His works were often censored, and one curator was even arrested, but the artist factored in these provocations: as early as the 1970s, he hung photographs of vulvas in a luxury restaurant. 

For Nobuyoshi Araki, these is nothing that cannot be shown in art

Nobuyoshi Araki knows no taboos as a photographer; for the restless artist, everything can be shown: death, sexuality, the abysmal. Araki also does not stop at his private life: during his honeymoon, he created the very intimate photo series, Sentimental Journey. The fact that Araki became known above all as a nude and fetish photographer is due not least to his international curators. The artist never influences the content and design of his exhibitions, but deliberately leaves the selection of images to be shown to the respective organisers. Although Araki himself no longer considers his bondage pictures - kinbaku photography - to be a focal point of his creativity, he has not quite finished with it and always carries a rope with him. He has no shortage of models; even celebrities like the pop star Lady Gaga ask for a sitting with the master. 

The encounter between photographer and model as a great game

Nobuyoshi Araki understands his camera as a source of strength that drives him and gives him the opportunity to overcome limits even in old age. He always keeps the camera to hand, but resolutely refuses to place himself, as photographer, above his models. It is always an encounter at eye level, a great game, and the picture is the result of the encounter between all involved – which includes the viewer as the third party, who contributes their own dimension with their expectations and feelings. Araki himself does not believe that he can achieve a change in society by traversing boundaries – in his opinion, that does not lie in the possibilities of art, and least not photography. But it is the little boy’s desire to break prohibitions that has driven him over his decades-long successful career. Nobuyoshi Araki has received prizes and awards for his art, including the Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art in 2008, and the Mainichi Art Prize in 2012. 

Nobuyoshi Araki lives and works in Tokyo.