NOBUYOSHI

ARAKI
REFLEX

NEW

ART

GALLERY

N O B U Y O S H I

ARAKI

Weteringschans 83 - 1017 RZ Amsterdam

TEL. 020 - 423 54 23 FAX. 020 - 422 35 42
info@reflexnewartgallery.com

Design and layout by Alex Daniels jr.

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI

KAORI

Araki, though, has never disdained strong colour. In many images,

Kaori wear's a traditional kimono, partly open to reveal her pale skin in
contrast with the boldly patterned fabric. The stylisation echoes the

This book is a diary of an unusual relationship, and a fable of an

graphic art of erotic 19th century Japanese wood-block prints. At the

erotic adventure. Although the photographer/artist is always Nobuyoshi

same time, Araki nods to the high brow with the low brow. The elabo-

Araki, and while the model and Muse a young woman called Kaori from

rate, symbolic poses of Kabuki theatre and Noh drama, clash with the

Tokyo, the story is not as simple as that. There is no beginning to speak

trash culture of cheap sex and Godzilla. With a knowing glance, Kaori

of, nor is it your usual narrative, complete with a happy ending. Instead

clasps plastic dinosaurs in her hands. Reclining provocatively on a

we are presented with a multi-faceted series of portraits of Araki's

bed, the toy monster peeks into the folds in her kimono.

harem of one.
In Araki's images, Kaori appears in a variety of poses. Effortlessly,

Nor is there a consistent mood in Araki's portraits. Kaori sits pertly

she displays an astonishing range of emotions - brashly self-confident

on a boudoir chair. Kaori the temptress in a sheer negligee. Kaori

and strong, baffled, insecure and mysterious. We begin to wonder

toussled and unkempt. Kaori smeared with coloured liquids, dripping

whether Kaori is merely a willing subject? Is Araki really just the

between her breasts and into a bathtub. Kaori imitating an exotic bird,

director and the voyeur? The guises change, and then change again.

a prisoner in a filagree cage. Kaori as an anonymous young woman

The roles are continually reversed. Who is really in control?

standing in an empty Tokyo laneway. Kaori flung to the floor like a

Since he first met Kaori in 2001, Araki has photographed her

endlessly, taking thousands of pictures of her. All his innovations and

corpse. In some images, Araki's camera enters the shot. Even in the
most intimate portrait, the artist's presence cannot be ignored.

inspirations, both classical and controversial, would appear to have

come together under the influence of an ideal muse.

"Araki's fundamental idea is that photography is an 'I-Novel'," writes

The photographs are printed both in stark black-and-white and in lush

Gijs van Tuyl in Tokyo Nouvelle, the 1995 publication commemorating

colour. More recently, Araki has been adding hand-painted elements to

Araki's solo exhibition at Germany's Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

some of these portraits. The effect is a Kaori captured by a rainbow.

"In Japanese literature - but in European literature too, from Defoe's

In his notorious bondage photographs, Araki shows women bound

Robinson Crusoe to Nabokov's Lolita - the narrator tells his story in the

by tight ropes, trussed-up and helpless, often dangling precariously

first person, partly to lend verisimilitude to the fiction by making it seem

above the floor. "It's not a punishment. It's an expression of affection,"

as though everything is experienced in the 'I', and by describing

says Araki. "In Japan, it's called kinbaku and it's not the same thing as

the outside world from the inside.

the Western notion of bondage. For me, when the girl is tied up, she

Araki the man is likewise a phenomenom. The intensity of his

gets more sexy, more beautiful". His hand-painted photographs of Kaori

life and work attest to a vitality so fierce that one is involuntarily

show her imprisoned by waves of paint instead, tossed around naked

reminded of death, the reverse of life, the shadow cast by

in a swirling maelstrom of colour.

a bright light."

Born in 1940 in Tokyo, Araki graduated from Chiba University at the

His work stands as a significiant series of single moments that are a

age of 24, having majored in photography and cinema. He studied Italian

silent testimony to private worlds traditionally secreted away from

neo-realism and the French new wave, the effects of which can still be

public gaze. When placed in the context of Araki's entire body of

seen in those photographs where the model appears to be on the verge

work, it illustrates most vividly the vicarious line between cultural

of some new discovery, lost in an unexplained emotion. While working as

acceptability and cultural reality."

a photographer at the Japanese advertising agency, Dentsu Inc, he

Sometimes he played along with the trials of censorship and

began to use the company's equipment to photograph female employes.

his burgeoning reputation as "the hair photographer" by scratching his

His commercial work was dedicated to cool, precise shots of refrigerators

negatives before printing them, or applying black paint directly to his

and kitchen appliances in the studio, while his private work began

imagery, covering the vaginas of his models. He exaggerated the

focusing on capturing nude models poised in the shadows of mystery.

perceived shame of pubic hair, and such devices can be seen as the

He practised with new techniques, circulating his one-off photographs as

fore-runners of his painted photographs of Kaori from 2003-2004.

xeroed copies, and by the time he met his his future wife Aoki Yoko in
1968, he had already received the Taiyo Prize for his film Satchin And
His Brother Mabo.

Araki and his camera became a regular sight in Tokyo's red-light

district. He ventured into brothels, karaoke bars and sex shops,

In 1970, a controversial exhibition which featured many images of

photographing prostitutes at work, but always with their full consent.

female genitalia signalled the direction that Araki's work would then take.

His personal morality has sorely tried some critics, but few

Yoko was to become his favourite model in the 1970s and 1980s, but at

photographers have worked so succinctly with the linked themes

the same time, he began to document the emerging Tokyo sex industry.

of hedonism and alienation.

While most of his models were young women, including amateur

As well as portraits, Araki has also done urban landscapes and empty

sex workers kitted out in the kittenish costumes of giggling schoolgirls

street scenes providing a metaphor for the loneliness of life in a

displaying a sort of peek-a-boo naughtiness, he also trained his camera on

metropolis. His black-and-white series titled Sentimental Journey records

older models and "fallen women". He maintained his policy of all-inclusive-

his wife Yoko's death from cancer in 1990, which was followed by a

ness, rather than worshipping perfection and desire. Now and then, clients

period in which Araki photographed striking, sparse vistas of the sky.

enter the frame, or the photographer himself partly intrudes on the action.

In these images, the artist's sense of grief and loss is palpable.

His obvious affection for his models, however, has never been in doubt.

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"The most striking aspect of Araki's work during this time was the

His large scale Painting Flower series is devoted to close-ups of lilies,

implicit earthy humour of his subjects," writes Wendy Cavenett in Black

orchids and other waxy flowers which he has first daubed in glowing paint.

+White magazine in 1999. "These pictures were less symbolic

It is as though Araki has decided to improve on nature, creating

but more complex, shocking yet engrossing, sometimes funny and

monumental still-lifes which comment on Japan's ambivalent attitude

beautiful to look at. Araki refused to censor his work, using his camera

toward untouched beauty. Meanwhile, over the past two years, his

to give Tokyo's sex industry a place in the national conscience.

Polaerotica series provide the perfect marriage of technique and theme.

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These unstaged snapshot portraits powerfully link the intense colours

rable and free-spirited. Bold calligraphy turns her into a brazen calendar

and instant gratification of Polaroid photography, to the rapid

girl. There is the sensation of both suspense and suspension of belief.

consumerism of sex by-the-hour.

With a career that now spans more than three decades, Araki's output

bondage ropes used in Araki's earlier photography. Simultaneously,

is vast. His energy and his obsessions are legendary. With almost 300

the paint functions as a material which both cancels and accentuates.

books to his name, Araki's work has also been exhibited in prestigious

These are not the carefully hand-painted portraits of Pierre et Gilles

solo shows at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, the

or Jan Saudek. Araki's use of paint is not about cautious, meticulous

Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Centre National de la Photographie in Paris,

beautification It is about rough, expressive emotion. His gestures

Stedelijk Museum voor Aktuele Kunst in Gent, Hara Museum of

are the wild, raw stuff of Arnulf Rainer and Gunter Brus, closer

Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Photographers Gallery in London,

to German expressionism than the high-style violence of Manga comics.

Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, the Taipei

In any case, splashes of red and pink

Museum in Taiwan and the Frans

inevitably conjure up the instant impres-

Halsmuseum in Haarlem.

sion of blood. In other painted portraits,

This book is being published on the

especially those in which Araki has inclu-

occasion of Araki's third solo show at

ded abstract, bursting blossoms, he has

Reflex Gallery in Amsterdam. Araki first

transferred a sunny, tropical disposition

began to photograph Kaori at about

to the playful pictures of Kaori rollicking

the same time that he established

and rolling on sheets. Against a yellow

his

gallery.

background, she appears to be swim-

Accordingly, the Amsterdam exhibition

ming on sand, amid details painted using

is dedicated solely to Araki's portraits

Gauguin's coral pallette. She looks back

of his current muse, his chameleon of

at the viewer with bedroom eyes. As ever,

expressive beauty.

there is the implication of an intimate

relationship

with

the

Developing from his photographs of painted flowers, Araki's most

recent photographs of Kaori are a further departure from the traditional

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The paint itself becomes physical. It binds her to the paper, like the

rapport between the model and photographer. Most photographers attempt

to mask this unspoken relationship, but Araki exaggerates it with relish.

world of portraiture. With broad brush strokes, he applies waves of bright

In an age of digital manipulation, Araki instead uses an extremely

colour to his black and white prints. Swirls of paint seem to "push" Kaori

manual, hands-on technique to create a new celebration of feminine beauty.

aside. The colours wrap sensually around her contours, like a blanket.

Kaori becomes a buoyant symbol of joy, hope and freedom. Neither the

Her silhouette emerges from lush fields. Her poses are relaxed and com-

photographer nor his muse live under the pewter skies of tragedy and

for-table, or alternatively, she is shown with awkardly splayed limbs. Shot

suffering. Every moment derves our attention, no scene is without beauty

from above, Kaori appears to be leaping like a ballerina, defying gravity

and no pleasure is forbidden. Amid the bustle and neon lights of Tokyo,

against carefully choreo-graphed backgrounds. She is spontaneous, desi-

Araki has given us his own version of paradise.

Jonathan Turner

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A very special thanks to:

Nobuyoshi Araki, Kaori, Yoshiko Isshiki, Natsuko Odate, Ria and Lex Daniels,
Famous Amsterdam, Freya Venneman, Jonathan Turner, Jason Fried, Travis Klose, Masa Sakamaki.
Design and Layout: Alex Daniels Jr. 1500 copies Print: Meco Offset Zwaag.

Reflex New Art Gallery. All rights reserved

Alex en Araki

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ISBN 90-805531-8-2

9 789080 553187