The Araki Effect

by Nobuyoshi Araki (Photographs)

Araki's career in full, from the portraits of the early 1960s to city scenes and tender tributes to his wife Araki is known the world over for his controversial erotic portraits of Japanese women, often bound using the kinbaku (Japanese bondage) technique. A unique figure in contemporary photography, he has always found creative inspiration in his daily existence, without making any distinction between his personal life and public and professional practice.

The Araki Effect offers a broad overview of his from the first series from 1963–65, Satchin and His Brother Mabo , to Subway of Love , a large collection of images taken in the Tokyo subway between 1963 and 1972, the year he also made Autumn in Tokyo , which recounts the autumn he spent wandering through the city in the twilight hours. These are followed by Sentimental Night in Kyoto , less known than the famous Sentimental Journey , both tributes to his wife, Yoko; Balcony of Love, Death Reality, Tokyo Diary from 2017, and one of his latest collections, Araki's Paradise from 2019.

Born in Tokyo in 1940, Nobuyoshi Araki worked at an advertising agency in the 1960s, where he met his future wife, Yoko Araki, the subject of his now classic volume Sentimental Journey . Araki's oeuvre spans erotic portraits of women, still lifes, images of plants, scenes of everyday life and architectural photography. He has published around 400 books, shown in many international exhibitions and his work is part of important collections worldwide. Araki lives and works in Tokyo.

200 pages, Hardcover

Published October 22, 2019

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.