“In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death.”
—Nobuyoshi Araki
As part of the overarching theme of 6th SIPF 2018, Between Love & Death: Diary of Nobuyoshi Araki traces the universal stories of love, death and sentiments told in a confessional diaristic style, coined by Araki as shishashin or ‘I-photography’. The 118 original photographs delve deep into the heart of Araki’s relationship with his wife, Yoko, beginning from Subway Love (1963) and expanding into Sentimental Journey (1971) and Winter Journey (1990).
In an attempt to exorcise his sadness of Yoko’s passing, Araki’s encounters with youths in the spring of 1994 led to his unflinching studio portraiture, and honest representation of the moment in time. With Araki’s balcony as a performative stage, this erratic and passionate tempo of life is alleviated by the mundane and humourous. While grounded in reality, the cracked lens images from his Uganbochi series are analogies for his failing right eye, like a portal to another world. For Araki, they are reminders that death is on the other side of life, as well as love.
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About the Artist
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo, 1940. He studied film and photography at Chiba University between 1959 to 1963. Upon graduation, he worked at the advertising agency Dentsu and met his future wife Yoko Aoki. As one of the most prolific living photographer, he has madeover 500 publications. Some of the most notable publications, Xeroxed Photo Album 1–25, Sentimental Journey, Tokyo Lucky Hole and Benjo are included in The Photobook: A History Volume edited by Badger and Parr.
Araki is known primarily for his photography that blends eroticism and bondage, as well as his diaristic approach of I-photography best represented by Sentimental Journey, an intimate and honest record of his honeymoon trip with his wife. With plain, explicit honesty, his works often stand on the edge between art and pornography, drawing controversial questions on the relationship between photographer and models. In his lifetime, he has received several awards and put up retrospectives, including the Higashikawa Prize, Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, and a major exhibition titled ‘Eros, Life and Death: The Photography of Japan’s Nobuyoshi Araki’ at Musée Guimet, Paris.
ARAKISS Party
6 Oct, Sat
7pm – late
$20 / $15 (Festival Pass Holder)
Curator Tour
27 Oct, Sat, 3 – 4:30pm
24 Nov, Sat, 3 – 4:30pm
$12 / Free for Festival Pass Holder