Nobuyoshi Araki

Born in 1940, Nobuyoshi Araki is one of Japan's greatest living photographers, and certainly its most controversial. His inexhaustible creative energy is proven by more than 300 books which he has published over the last four decades. His work, which often challenges social taboos surrounding sex and death, has drawn critical attention around the world.

In 1971 Araki made a private publication, Sentimental Journey: an intimate account of his honeymoon with his wife Yoko. In the preface to this book, Araki declared that his 'point of departure as a photographer was love ... and the idea of an I-novel' (a form of Japanese fiction written autobiographically and in the first person). With this statement, Araki established the genre of 'I-photography', in which his own life and feelings became the central subject of his work. The idea was to have a great impact on a new generation of Japanese photographers.

By 1990, the year of Yoko's death, Araki had produced an immense body of work. Through his photographs he created his own universe, where the themes of sex, life and death are closely intertwined. Tokyo, Araki's home city, often plays a leitmotif in his work, while his rich visual vocabulary is drawn from the erotic Shunga of the Edo period (1600-1867) as well as the glossy imagery of the new commercial culture. Through his innovative approach to his medium - sometimes combining painting, drawing and film - Araki has become an influential figure in contemporary art, well beyond the field of photography.

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