Araki - It Was Once A Paradise

If I didnt have photography, Nobuyoshi Araki has said, Id have absolutely nothing. My life is all about photography, and so life is itself photography. Arakis art overflows with life, and his life is awash in images. Since he started his photographic career in the mid-sixties Araki has taken many tens of thousand of photographs. They are personal, indifferent, posed, random, accidental, prurient, erotic, touching, vulgar, lascivious, lurid, and sentimental. The cumulative effect is overwhelming. What strikes one first about Araki is his frightening energy, it is matched by his inventiveness and generosity as an image maker. Just about every technical expedient possible is played out by him with the exception of digital photography, whose truthfulness Araki mistrusts. Catalogue exhibition of his 2011 Amsterdam exhibition with essays by Marcel Feil and Robbert Roos.