Araki

Nobuyoshi (1940). Japanese photographer born in Tokyo, the fifth of seven children. In 1963, after graduating in Engineering from the Univ. of Chiba with a concentration in photography and cinematography, he was hired by the advertising agency Dentsu, where he would stay for nine years. Very attentive to the scenographic side of photography, he constantly photographed all aspects of reality with every model of camera. He worked with ease in both color and black and white, with frequent recourse to the expressivity of instant Polaroid film, which he used as a kind of block-notes. In a country such as Japan, which for years banned explicit nudity (until the 1980s every picture showing pubic hair was censored or destroyed), Araki proposed a different and bravely daring vision. His explicit references to sexuality and to bondage, and the immediacy of his nudes, were set in a wider context dominated by the presence of an extremely modern urban landscape as well as by the traditional interior décor of the Japanese house. His most famous work, Sentimental Journey, followed his relationship with his wife Yoko Aoki from 1971 to 1990, when she prematurely passed away. The exaltation of the female body and a subtle polemic against its commercialization are traits also present in the many advertising campaigns and fashion reports (always accompanied by haunting short films shot backstage in video by an assistant), carried out by Araki, now considered one of the most famous contemporary Japanese photographers. He began to exhibit his works in Japan in 1965, in Europe in 1994 and in the U.S. in 1995. His most important exhibits were in Paris, in Tokyo and at the Museo Pecci in Prato.