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Nobuyoshi Araki
Self, Life, Death
HC 22 x 30 cm., 718 (!) pp. , Deluxe edition.
Phaidon 2005
EURO 150.00
Mit einer ersten vollständigen Liste aller Publikationen Araki's. Deluxe Edition, Leinengebunden. 3.000 nummerierte Exemplare, mit einer aufwendigen Produktion von Inlays. Mit Texten von Araki selbst, Akiko Miki, Yoshiko Isshiki, Tomoko Sato, Ian Jeffrey, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jonathan Watkins, Yuko Tanaka, Kotaro Iizawa.
Through his photographs he has created his own universe, where the themes of sex, life and death are closely intertwined. Tokyo, Araki's home city, often plays a leitmotif in his work, while his rich visual vocabulary is drawn from the erotic Shunga of the Eda period (1600?1867) as well as the glossy imagery of the new commercial culture. Through his innovative approach to his medium - sometimes combining painting, drawing and film - Araki has become an influential figure in contemporary art, beyond the field of photography.
This major publication provides the most comprehensive overview yet of Araki's prolific 40 year career. Araki's key series of works are included alongside many rare and previously unpublished photographs. Featuring an interview and essays by writers from Japan and Europe, this book examines Araki from a broad range of perspectives and gives a cultural context to his work. Also included are a large selection of Araki's writings, translated into English for the first time, as well as complete illustrated and annotated bibliography of his own books. Reflecting Araki's principle of "I-photography", the book is divided into three sections that follow the main recurring themes in his work: Self, Life and Death.
"The sheer quantity and density of images, the sense of a whole world recorded, is daunting. In the dialogues between images, in his great walls of colliding imagery, there is a constant oscillation between carefully posed and constructed theatricality and snapshot immediacy and spontaneity. Here we find private fantasies acted out, voyeuristic and pornographic scenarios, photo-album mementos, games with plastic dinosaurs, flowers, portraits, street scenes, nudes, details." Adrian Searle, The Guardian -
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