Nobuyoshi Araki - エロトス/Erotos - 1993

エロトス/Erotos

Nobuyoshi Araki
libroport/1993/Japanese,English/238*308*18

Erotos” is a collection of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki, one of Japan's leading photographers. The year before the publication of this book, Araki was fined for publicly displaying obscene pictures at the “Shakaijin Nikki (Diary of a Madman)” photography exhibition he held in 1992, but he has not let the fine get him down, and in this book he expresses his raw, grotesque sexuality (life) in Araki's own way under the themes of eros and thanatos. The following is from the commentary by art critic and photo critic Shunji Ito. Nobuyoshi Araki seems to have entered a new phase with “Erotos. Until now, Araki has mainly photographed people and landscapes that have thrown up and accepted his intimate feelings, but what he captures in “Erotos” are parts of the human body, details of materials, close-ups of plants, and sections of places. There is no presence there to catch the gaze that Araki has been throwing at us. There are no eyes of the subject staring back at Araki's gaze, and there is no landscape that caresses his memory. What is there is a series of parts, fragments, and details that are almost inorganic.