On entering the exhibition on the museum’s second floor, the outspoken, incendiary side of Araki is in full view as one moves down a darkened hallway adorned with rope knots suggestive of kinbaku-bi (Japanese rope bondage art) to confront a lone spot-lit photograph of a suspended, bound kimono-clad woman with her legs splayed, her genitals barely covered by a flower. Conscious of their audience, the curators at the Museum of Sex are literally roping in the viewer’s attention with the most sensational work before slowly unfurling a more nuanced reading of Araki. Nobuyoshi Araki, KaoRi Love (Diptych), 2007

Frank, Priscilla (February 21, 2018). "Will Nobuyoshi Araki Be Photography's Last Legendary Dirty Old Man? (NSFW)". The Huffington Post. 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. Sachin led into another series by Araki, which he called Photographs of Me, for which he set up a makeshift photo studio, and had "regular" people from Tokyo come in to take portraits in rapid succession. The artist believes that in these portraits he conveys who he is through the way he photographs others. This autobiographical sensibility would go on to pervade his entire oeuvre.a b c d Rich, Motoko (May 5, 2018). "When an Erotic Photographer's Muse Becomes His Critic". The New York Times . Retrieved May 6, 2018. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco [30] Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Araki photographed Saskia de Brauw and Sung Jin Park in Tokyo for the brand's spring/summer 2015 campaign. [16] Controversy [ edit ] Sex clubs, cats, rope bondage, nude women, and the bliss of newlyweds on a honeymoon are some of the most famous subjects of Nobuyoshi Araki. Probably the most famous and influential Japanese photographer of the post-war period, Araki's work is technically masterful and blurs the lines between high art, photo-biography, and pornography. His photographic practice is controversial, highly sexual, and frequently challenging to both a Western and a Japanese sense of propriety and personal expression. Araki's series Erotos (1993) poetically blends the two major driving forces behind his work, love (with Eros being the ancient Greek personification of love, desire, and passion), and death ( Thanatos being the ancient Greek personification of Death). Unsurprisingly, all of the images are highly erotic, with some, including this photograph, presenting explicit scenes of nudity and sexual congress, and others (such as close-up images of blooming or decaying flowers and overripe fruit) alluding more subtly to sex, sexual organs, and death. Extreme close-ups and careful framing to echo or present genitalia are characteristic of Araki's practice during this period, with the side-on purse of a mouth appearing at first glance to be an anus, or an extreme close-up of a vagina placed alongside a raw oyster in its shell, drawing graphic and explicit attention to their similarity in shape and texture.

NobuyishiAraki's point-and-shoot technique may demonstrate enthusiasm for the subject at that moment but that does not necessarily translate to the printed product. if any, they seem to become de-sexualized here (again my homo-ness could be at fault). need to ask a straight male friend to look at this. Araki became better known to an international audience through his participation in Neue Fotografie aus Japan at the Kulturhaus der Stadt, Graz, Austria, in 1977. This major exhibition profiled the wave of new photography emerging from post-war Japan, including work by Araki, Daidō Moriyama, Akihide Tamura, and Yoshihiro Tatsuki. It was a major hit in Austria, attracting large audiences and exposing European art to the new perspectives of artists in the re-emerging global economy of Japan. Whilst Araki's work was recognized as explicit, critics and curators in the US and Europe positioned it as part of a vanguard of new subjectivism in Japanese photography rather than merely pornography, greatly increasing his profile in the international art scene. Tokyo Biyori (1997) – a biographical drama based on the life of Yoko Araki, the wife of Nobuyoshi Araki. Written by Nobuyoshi Araki and Ryo Iwamatsu, and directed by Naoto Takenaka. The Araki couple were portrayed by Naoto Takenaka and Miho Nakayama. Araki makes a cameo as a train conductor. [28] Sharp, Jasper (2008). Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Guildford: FAB Press. p.218. ISBN 978-1-903254-54-7.

In the middle of his career, Araki produced an extensive series of photographs of bondage, specifically kinbaku, literally "the beauty of tight binding", which was a formal system of ritualistic bondage developed during the Edo period (1603-1867) from a method used for binding criminals and prisoners. In this image the tight ropes restrict and frame the breasts and nipples of the model, who looks across the image and away from the camera. Whilst sexually charged, the image is also aesthetically interesting, with the shadows of the ropes and disturbed clothing further marking the skin of the model and her disheveled hair disrupting the stereotype of an immaculately formal and composed Japanese courtesan. Whilst the woman in the image does not appear to be in pain, her expression is ambiguous, and does not suggest sexual excitement or enthusiastic participation, a factor which complicates the relationship of the viewer to the action represented. This ambiguity is particularly complicated when seen within a context of the excessive sexualization and infantilization of Japanese women that characterizes much pornography. Martin Parr; Gerry Badger (2004). The Photobook: A History, Volume I. London: Phaidon. p.274,286. ISBN 978-0-7148-4285-1.

Photography for the Afterlife. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2014. ISBN 978-4582278118. With an essay by Mario Perniola, "Araki's Hell".In 2004, an American director, Travis Klose, released a documentary about Araki called Arakimentari, which discusses the artist's lifestyle and work. Weisser, Thomas; Yuko Mihara Weisser (1998). Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. Miami: Vital Books: Asian Cult Cinema Publications. p.196. ISBN 1-889288-52-7. a b c Shiraishi, Sakiko (April 25, 2018). "#MeToo Japan: What happened when women broke their silence". BBC News . Retrieved May 6, 2018. Araki developed an autobiographical mode of working with images that he calls 'I-Photography' ( shi-shashin), in which his photography documents his life and the lives of those around him, recording the details and private moments they share. Nothing is off limits as a subject for the camera, with Araki even documenting his wife's deathbed. This way of working is inspired by the 'I-novel' ( shi-shōsetsu) which was prevalent in the Japanese literary scene of the early 20th century. This way of working has proven to be inspirational for subsequent generations of biographical photographers who use the medium to explore the beauty and strangeness of their own lives.