Sentimental Travelogue

The Works of Nobuyoshi Araki #7

by Nobuyoshi Araki

Araki is a superstar in Japan. You realize this if you chart his wake through the streets of Shinjuku--young girls screeching, yakuza gangsters pointing, salary men stopping dead in their tracks. No photographer in the West has this kind of public visibility. The people of Tokyo love Araki--he's one of their own, a homeboy, and he loves them his work has been one long poem to his city of birth and of choice." Nobuyoshi When I photograph unhappiness I only capture unhappiness, but when I photograph happiness, life, death, and everything else comes through. Unhappiness seems grave and heavy; happiness is light, but happiness has its own heaviness, a looming sense of death. The camera itself, the photograph itself, calls up death. Also, I think about death when I photograph, which comes out in the print. Perhaps that's an Oriental, Buddhist perception. To me, photography is an act in which my "self" is pulled out via the subject. Photography was destined to be involved with death. Reality is in color, but at its beginnings photography always discolored reality and turned it into black and white. Color is life, black and white is death. A ghost was hiding in the invention of photography.

208 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Nobuyoshi Araki is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He is also known by the nickname Arākī.

Araki studied photography during his college years and then went to work at the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his future wife, the essayist Yōko Araki. After they were married, Araki published a book of pictures of his wife taken during their honeymoon titled Sentimental Journey. She later died in 1990. Pictures taken during her last days were published in a book titled Winter Journey.

Having published over 350 books (and still more every year) Araki is considered one of the most prolific artists alive or dead in Japan and around the world. Many of his photographs are erotic; some have been called pornographic. Some of his most popular photography books are Sentimental Journey, Tokyo Lucky Hole, and Shino. He also contributed photography to the Sunrise anime series Brain Powerd.

The Icelandic musician Björk is an admirer of Araki's work, and served as one of his models. At her request he photographed the cover and inner sleeve pages of her 1997 remix album, Telegram.

Araki's life and work were the subject of Travis Klose's 2005 documentary film Arakimentari.