Nobuyoshi Araki: All Women are Beautiful

Nobuyoshi Araki: All Women are Beautiful

September 7 to October 23, 2011 Galerie Steph Ooi Botos

the love of life

by Charles Merewether

The photography of Nobuyoshi Araki is, in a number of respects, exceptional. In fact, if we survey the histories of postwar or contemporary art in Japan or that of Japanese photography, he is barely given reference. And yet, as a photographer, he has produced more than three hundred and fifty photography books over the past forty years. Moreover, Araki can be credited as one of the first of the generation of the Nineteen Seventies to develop the idea of personal photography, in which the photographer and subject were inextricably linked. This idea is explored succinctly by Iizawa Ktar. In his essay The Evolution of Postwar Photography, he places Araki amongst others, as exponents of a more personal style of photography, albeit differently amongst themselves.1 We should also consider the environment of rapid industrialization and a developing mass culture. This became palpable in

the character and tempo of modern life in Japan. Both of these factors converge in the figure of Araki. At the same time, Araki developed his practice in a milieu in which professional photography was significant and highly visible. As a young man, he grew up in the midst of older artists and photographers who had a profound influence on him. In particular, both Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama and the group around the magazine Provoke were of critical importance because of their visceral engagement with their subject matter, especially the subject of the street and the expressive character of individual lives.2 The year Nineteen Seventy was a turning point that was captured by the contradictory politics of Expo 70 in Osaka. This was not least due to the rampant commercialization that was made of the

event and the consequent abandonment by some of the leading architects, and both the visual and performing artists. In fact, Expo 70 marked the end of an era that had seen the rise of an extraordinary group of photographers, alongside others across all fields of the arts, who had explored and captured the rise of Tokyo from the ashes of the Atomic Bomb.3 The Seventies then marked a turn to more personal subjects in the face of an increasingly anonymous city and the human subject retreated behind the industrial fabric and repressive State controlled structures of a mass culture. This is partially reflected in the early Araki photographs, such as the Subway series that, made between 19631972, depict the everyday life of ordinary people. In the Sixties, the work of Moriyama and others had opened a path for Araki in regard to the

subject of nakedness. A number of photographers had published photo essays in many of the popular photography magazines of the era. They were not pornographic but, rather, emanated a form of innocent delight in the portrayal of women, liberated - as if in their nudity - from the dictates of urban living. There was something here that resonated with the Western idea of the counter-culture movement of the period. By the mid Sixties, the world around them was rapidly and violently changing.4 This was reflected in the work of both Nakahira and Moriyama who depicted the grim and almost soulless urbanscape of people living especially on the bleak and barren edges of the city or the semi-industrial wastelands. Their aim was, as stated in the first issue of Provoke, to capture and confront the world in its naked state. The image of people included illicit encounters between men and women. One of the most powerful series of

work that was produced for Provoke 2 by Moriyama, was a series of a naked woman in an apartment and on her bed waiting for a customer. There is, in essence, nothing extraordinary about the images, nothing provocative but rather a picture of the everyday, of its uncertainty. This is precisely the point of the photographs, evoking a wistful sense of melancholy. The photographic work of Araki begins with The Sentimental Journey (1971), an account of his honeymoon with his newly wed wife the essayist Yoko Araki. This book along with a book Winter Journey made just before her death in 1990 and in her memory, become melancholic eulogies of her life and their relationship. This event will haunt Arakis life and shape his sensibility. Throughout his years as a photographer, Araki has developed a continuous exploration of women in the privacy of their own home and in his city Tokyo. He has rarely made photographs outside of Tokyo. They are neither photographs of the

street nor of bars or public places yet, nonetheless, they are what Araki often refers to as my Tokyo. The photographs are about individual woman, their bodies, their exposure to another, to the outside. Often they occur as a result of requests from the women themselves. These photographs are neither pornographic nor sexual. Rather, they are intimate portraits and one can feel a kind of intoxication that comes from this contact. There is a beauty to their face and their expression, a kind of poetry to the generosity that they offer to the photographer. This personal exchange counters what we can refer to as the growing solitude of a culture becoming anonymous, losing a sense of the individual, the neighbor, each other. Araki photographs every day in a manner that is diaristic. This approach a personal event he notes belongs to the present or constitutes the present, even though at the same time, it falls as an interregnum between the past that has passed and the future that is to come. This moment is precious and a fragile moment, a moment that is transient, appearing, disappearing. It allows us to

appreciate better Arakis photographs of flowers that are often associated with women. As with women, the photographs of flowers offer a sense of frailty as to their beauty and transience that intimates their death. Jean Genet understood this association and sentiment. It is not the disclosure of death to come as of Roland Barthes but the very opposite, the vitality of life today, now, at this moment: that is all. In interviews with Araki, he has noted that the camera for him displaces memory and becomes

associated with death. This resonates with the death of Yoko. The photographs of clouds, and of what he refers to as skyscapes, begin to appear after his wifes death in a number of his photo-books. The clouds appear to offer a form of life that symbolizes transience as they pass across the fathomless sky above. And yet, nonetheless, this space is as Araki suggests, the domain of the spirit. In this space the imagination is set free, a space in which to dream and the promise of desire and of death meet.

Notes
1

See Iizawa Ktar, The Evolution of Postwar Photography in The History of Japanese Photography, edited by Anne Wilkes Tucker and others. (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003), pp. 222-225.

2 Provoke existed for only three issues (between November 1968 August 1969) and was edited by Taki Koji, Nakahira Takuma, Okada Takahiko and Takanashi Yukata. Moriyama joined them in the second issue. After they stopped the magazine, two important books followed, first by the Provoke group First Discard the World of Pseudo-Certainty (1970) and by Nakahira For a Language to Come (1970). 3 See Art Anti-Art Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, s1950-1970, Edited Charles Merewether with Rika Hiro, (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute) 2007. 4

For extensive discussion, see Fn. 3.

Novel Photograph

1995, Fuji Crystal RP Print, 20 x 24 inches / 50.8 x 60 cm

67 Shooting Back

2007, RP Direct Print, 20 x 24 in / 50.8 x 60 cm

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Lewd Painting

2011, RP Direct Print, 19.7 x 18 in / 56 x 45.7 cm

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Pola Eros

2006-2009, Polaroid, unique, 4.3 x 3.5 in / 10.8 x 8.8 cm

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Sky

2006-2009, Polaroid, unique, 4.3 x 3.5 in / 10.8 x 8.8 cm

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Pola Nostalgia

2011, Polaroid, unique, 4.3 x 3.5 in / 10.8 x 8.8 cm

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B/W bondage, Jablonka Galerie Berlin, Berlin 2007 ARAKI GOLD, lIstituto Nazionale per la Grafica Palazzo Fontana di Trevi, Roma 67 Shooting Back, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo TOKYO JINSEI, Edo Tokyo Museum, Tokyo SHIKI IN ME, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki , Galeria Enrique Guerrero, Mexico D.F., Mexico Life Like the World of Photography by Nobuyoshi Araki: Flowers by Araki, epSITE, EPSON IMAGING GALLERY, Singapore Wanted: Dead and Alive - Works by the Genius Photo-maniac, Nobuyoshi Araki, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) Singapore NOBUYOSHI ARAKI: Self, Life, Death, Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, London Nobuyoshi Araki Tokyo Nude, Yoshii Gallery, New York Kaori, Reflex New Art Gallery, Amsterdam From Winter to Spring, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Painting Flower, epSITE, EPSON IMAGING GALLERY, Tokyo ARAKI BY ARAKI Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Hana-Jinsei Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography Tokyo Still Life Tampere Art Museum, Tampere, Finland Nobuyoshi Araki Jablonka Galerie, Kln Suicide in Tokyo Italian Pavilion, Venice Shosetsu Seoul Artium, Fukuoka Tokyo Still Life Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK Pola, Low, Los Angeles

2006

Nobuyoshi Araki
b. Tokyo, Japan 1940

2005

Selected solo exhibitions

2011 2010

Film Nostalgia, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Ai no Jikan, Leica Ginza Salon, Tokyo Koki No Shashin : Photographs of A Seventy Year Old, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo 2THESKY, my Ender, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo The Faces of Japan Project HIROSHIMA by Nobuyoshi Araki, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima 69YK, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo KOSHOKU PAINTING, Rat Hole Gallery, Tokyo Hana Kinbaku, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo

2004

2003

2009

2002

2008
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2001

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Shosetsu Seoul Spiral Hall, Tokyo Shikijo kyo Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Flower Shadow Gallery Artgraph, Tokyo 2000 Viaggio Sentimental Centro Perlarte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy Arakinema: Kurumado Pecci, Prato Polaevacy Nadiff, Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki Low, Los Angeles Shashin Shijyo Shugi Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki Stedellik Museum voor Actuelle Kunst, Gent, Belgium Nobuyoshi Araki Galerie Almine Rech, Paris Nobuyoshi Araki Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris Nobuyoshi Araki Damasquine Art Gallery, Bruxelle, Belgium Arakinema: As Paradise Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo ARAKI Nobuyoshi Sentimental Photography, Sentimental Life Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki Scalo Art Space, New York RYUSEKI Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo ALive Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Grand Gallery, Prague; Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich Araki Nobuyoshi Il Tempo, Tokyo Winter Love Toru Maeshima Gallery, Wakayama Tokyo Shijyo Diechtorhallen, Hamburg The Past= Photographs 1972-1973 Stadtisches Museum Leverkusen, Germany Nobuyoshi Araki= Tokyo Stadtisches Klinikum Fulda, Germany Portraits and Flowers Photographers Gallery, London Tokyo Nostalsia GaIleria Photology, Milan As Life traveling to Toyama, Yokohama, Sapporo and Fukuoka

Arakinema: Tokyo Comedy in Vienna, SpiraI Hall, Tokyo Arakinema: Taipei Yomiuri Culture Salon Aoyama; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan Arakinema: Erotic Woman in Color Taipei, Taiwan; Bangkok, Thailand Cosmosco Taka ishii Gallery Story portraits Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand As Paradise Shinjuku Takashimaya Concourse (outdoor instaIIation) , 1997 As Life Kachimai HaIl, Obihiro; Laforet Museum Harajuku Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich Shikijyo Scalo Book Store, Zurich Flower Rondo J. M. Gallery, Tokyo Araki Retrographs Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Arakinema: Retro-Ero Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo A World of GirIs II Tempo, Tokyo Tokyo Comedy Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria Arakinema: Love Secession Wiener secession, Vienna, Austria Arakinema: Tokyo Paradise Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria Arakinema: Vienna and Tokyo Paradise Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki Gallery Starmach, Krakow, Poland Nobuyoshi Araki Studio Guenzani, Milan Faces vs Bodies SpiraI Garden, Tokyo Arakinema: Faces vs Bodies/ Spiral Hall, Tokyo Death Reality Taka lshii Gallery Tokyo The Past 1972-1973 Stadtsparkasse. Muenster, Germany FIowers: Life and Death Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo Tokyo Novel Egg Gallery, Tokyo Shadows of Flowers/ Gallery Eve Tokyo Bokuju-kitan Jablonka Galerie, Kln Arakinema: Novel Photography Studio Mouris Roppongi, Tokyo Arakinema: Flower Rondo ll Areana Hall, Tamagawa Takashimaya SC, Tokyo

Tokyo

1999

1996

1998

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Fake Love Ginza Komatsu, Tokyo The Face, The Dead Pace Wildenstein and MacGill, Los Angeles A moment in Time espace TAG Heuer, Tokyo From Close-range BIum & Poe, Los Angeles 1995 Erotos Gallery lndex, Stockholm, Sweden; GalIery Bang, Oslo, Norway; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991 traveling to Zone Gallery, New Castle, England; Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich Araki Nobuyoshi Torch, Amsterdam Journal intime Fondation Cartier pour Iart contemporain, Paris The First Year of Heisei Le Garage, Reims, France Nobuyoshi Araki: A-Diary/Sachin and His Brother Mabo, Galerie Chantal CrouseI, Paris Naked Novel Egg Gallery, Tokyo Arakinema: Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey Sogetsu Hall, Tokyo Satchin in Summer Laforet Museum Harajuku Tokyo Arakinema: Passion in Okinawa Ryubo Hall, Naha Pictures by A Virgin Boy, Daccho-kun Space Link, Tokyo (drawings) Tokyo Novelle Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany Bokuju-kitan Jablonka Galerie, Kln Nobuyoshi Araki: Diario lntimo Encontros de Fotografia, Coimbra, Portugal Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991 traveling to Museet for Fotokunst,Odense, Denmark; Nordliga Fotocentret, Oulu Finland Private Photography Yurakucho Asahi Gallery, Tokyo Sky Gallery Eve, Tokyo Tokyo Nude/Private Diary Luhring Augustine, New York Unconscious Tokyo : Tokyo Cube White Cube, London Obscene Photographs Taka Ishii Gallery Tokyo Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991 traveling to Galerie Museum, Bozen, Italy; Kunsthal

Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Fotomuseum im Munchener Standmuseum, Munich, Germany; Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria Fine Tokyo Days Gallery Verita, Tokyo New World of Love La Camera, Tokyo ErotosParco Gallery, Tokyo 1992 Love interrogations: Tokyo Fax./Facks Apt Gallery, Tokyo State of Things: A Thousand Photographs Exhibited Day by Day P3 Art and Environment, Tokyo Angels Festival Parco Gallery, Tokyo Car Photographs Egg Gallery, Tokyo Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991 Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria;traveling to Galerie Fotohof, Mirabellpark, Salzburg, Austria Photo-maniac Diary Egg Gallery, Tokyo Winter Journey Egg Gallery Tokyo As Nude Exhibition: Lovers Apt Gallery, Tokyo In the Move: The sky where Butterflies Flitter Around Egg Gallery Tokyo Arakinema: Springscapes Cinema Rise Shibuya, Tokyo From Close-range Hosomi Gallery, Tokyo Jeanne Shinchosha Art Space; Heartland, Hamamatsu From Close-range: Yamorinskies like Flower and Nude, Athens Gallery, Osaka Colorscapes Seed Hall, Tokyo Chiro, My Love Ikebukuro Book Center Libro, Tokyo Skyscapes Gallery Verita, Tokyo Foto Tanz Shinjuku Konica Plaza, Tokyo Tokyo Lucky Hole apt Gallery, Tokyo Towards Winter : Tokyo, A City Heading for Death Egg Gallery Tokyo Nobuyoshi Araki 89: Selected Photographs Gallery Kosai, Machida, Kanagawa
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1991

1994

1990

1989
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1993

1987

A Part of Love Art Space Mirage, Tokyo Araki-s-m 1967-1987 Zeit-Foto Salon, Tokyo Puppet Prince Spiral Hall, Tokyo Shibuya Street Doi Photo Plaza Shibuya, Tokyo Slide show Arakinema : Tokyo-Story Cinema Rise, Tokyo As Erotomania Diary Zito-Foto Salon A Balthus Summer Picture Photo Space, Osaka A World of Girls Zeit-Foto Salon I am Photography,Arakis Storm of Love Doi Photo PlazaShibuya, Tokyo The 3rd Arakism Maanifesto Asahi Seimei Hall, Tokyo The 2nd Arakism Manifesto Yamaha Hall, Tokyo

Private Tokyo 76 Kinokuniya Gallery, Tokyo 1975 1974 1973 Actress: Kisaki Sekimura Minolta Photo Space, Tokyo Actresses: with Photos, videos, and Films, Gallery Matto Grosso, Tokyo Pseudo-documentary: Photographs of Polluted by Silver-Halogen Compound : Chirring Cicadas in Chorus, Kinokuniya Gallery Tokyo Flowers in Ruins Shimizu Gallery, Tokyo

1986

1984

1970-76 Kitchen-Ramen : Erotic-Realism Kitchen-Ramen, Tokyo 1982 1970 Tokyo 1967 1980 The Arakism Manifesto New York Theatre, Tokyo Wet dreams on midsummer Night and the Anniversary of the End of the War, Kinokuniya Gallery, Tokyo Zigeunerweisen : Fictitious Truth Kinokuniya Gallery, Tokyo First Visit to New York MINOLTA Photo Space, Tokyo Actress: A Sentimental Ero-Roman Horindo Art Space Tokyo Eizo: portraits of descendants Camp, Tokyo My Scene : 1940-1977 Ginza Cannon Salon, Tokyo Tokyo Blues Ginza Nikon Salon, Tokyo This years Photos Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo Last years Photos Shirakaba Gallery, Tokyo Yoko, My Love Ginza Nikon Salon Tokyo 1966 1965 Sur-sentimentalist Manifest No.2 : The Truth About Carmen Marie Kunugi Gallery,

1981

Ginza,Zoo Mitsubishi Denki Gallery, Tokyo Subway,Middle-aged Women Mitsubishi Denki Gallery, Tokyo Satchin and Mabo Shinjuku Station Gallery, Tokyo

1979 1978

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark Art Collection Neue Borse Centre Pompidou, Paris Deutsche Bank Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporain Fonds National dArt Contemporain, Centre National des Arts Plastiques Fotomuseum Wintherthur Sammlung Goetz, Munich Hara Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo IZU PHOTO MUSEUM Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

1977

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1976

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Maison de la photographie, Paris Muse des beaux-arts de Montral, Montral Museum fr Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna Telenor Foundation, Norway Peter Norton Collection (Tate UK) Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sammlung Hoffman The Israel Museum, Jerusalem The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The UBS Art Collection Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography Yokohama Museum of Art Kunsthalle Winterthur

There is nothing more interesting than women, and nothing more exciting.

As for Beauty spoken, this is like a fixed illusion that someone has developed. After all, I want to take photographs of real women, lives full of faults and with a dirty side. Thats why I have been taking such women for a long time.

PRIZES 2008 1994 1991 1990 1964 Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Arts Japan Inter-Design Forum Grand Prix 7th Higashikawa Prize Shashin-no-kai Prize from the Photographic Society of Japan First Taiyo Prize for Satchin

- Nobuyoshi Araki

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Copyright 2011 Galerie Steph, Singapore and Ooi Botos Gallery, Hong Kong. All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this catalogue or portions thereof in any form. Edition of 500 published by Galerie Steph and Ooi Botos Gallery. Edited by Lisa Botos and Stephanie Tham. Catalogue Design by Paulina Len. Nobuyoshi Araki: All Women are Beautiful exhibition presented by Galerie Steph and Ooi Botos Gallery in Singapore from September 7, 2011 to October 23, 2011 at Galerie Steph, Artspace@Helutrans, 39 Keppel Road, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 01-05, Singapore 089065. This catalogue may not be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system and/or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic mediaor mechanical, including illustrations, photocopy, film or video recording, internet posting, or any other information storage system without the permission of Nobuyoshi Araki and the publisher.

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Galerie Steph steph@galeriesteph.com www.galeriesteph.com

Ooi Botos lisa@ooibotos.com www.ooibotos.com