Araki is known worldwide for his controversial erotic portraits of Japanese women, often involving the kinbaku technique. A unique figure in contemporary photography, he always found creative inspiration in his everyday life, making no distinction between his personal life and his social and professional practice.
The Araki Effect offers a broad overview of his career: from the first series from 1963-65, Satchin and his brother Mabo, to Love Underground, a large collection of photographs taken on the Tokyo underground between 1963 and 1972, the year he also made Autumn in Tokyo, which tells the story of the autumn he spent wandering the city at dusk. These are followed by A Sentimental Night in Kyoto, lesser known than the famous Sentimental Journey, both tributes to his wife, Yoko; Balcony of Love, The Reality of Death, Tokyo Diary from 2017, and one of his latest collections, Araki Paradise from 2019.
Born in Tokyo in 1940, Nobuyoshi Araki worked in an advertising agency in the 1960s, where he met his future wife Yoko Araki, the subject of his now classic volume Sentimental Journey. Araki’s oeuvre spans erotic portraits of women, still lifes, images of plants, scenes of daily life and architectural photography. He has published about 400 books, presented in many international exhibitions, and his works are part of important collections all over the world. Araki lives and works in Tokyo.
