Friday, Mar 02, 2018

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by Robert Dunn

Nobuyoshi Araki doesn’t need me to write about him. He probably doesn’t need anybody to write about him at this point, five hundred or so books in (or is it five thousand?), and a long, serpentine, impressive career behind him (with, one hopes, much more to come). I mean, what is there to say anyway? That he did breakthrough work back in the early ’70s, discovering along with Daido Moriyama just how exhilirating a bunch of blurry photos reproduced on a crappy Xerox machine could be. That in the ’80s he became a rapscallion celebrity photographer, especially in the pages of the girlie-rag/serious photo magazine Shashin Jidai (Photography Age), that would feature Araki sex shots and Daido Moriyama serious-photo spreads (or vice versa). That Araki went on to a series of strong street photographs; perhaps the most powerful (and far from appetite-arousing) photobook dedicated to food, The Banquet; and, yes, way too many bondage shots. Every time you flip a page of even one of his more anodyne-appearing books, there’s a good chance you’ll hit yet another bondage picture. (Like, what’s up with that squid in The Banquet?) Alas, I’m not a connoisseur of pics of women trussed up with black leather and chains (tend to turn my eyes away from them, actually), but my sense is that Araki takes a pretty damn good one. Seems to put all of his heart (and other body parts) into the bondage snaps. It’s just that there are so damn many of them … not to mention all kinds of #metoo issues...