Two legendary photographers meditate on death, memory and ritual The latest collaboration between these two seminal photographers, Leben und Todis the culmination of their joint exhibition at artspace AM, Tokyo, in 2019. This intensely personal project concentrates on Juergen Teller's (born 1964) series Leben und Tod(Life and Death), which reflects upon the death of his uncle and stepfather Artur, juxtaposing photographs of his mother and homeland in Bubenreuth, Bavaria, with symbolic images of fertility and life on holiday in Bhutan with his partner Dovile Drizyte. Inspired by this series, Nobuyoshi Araki (born 1940) asked to photograph Teller's "childhood memory objects," items of particular emotional significance to him and his parents. Teller eagerly collected such personal gems, among them toys, a porcelain figurine and bridges made in the family's violin workshop; the resulting images by Araki are haunting yet playful, creating an intriguing narrative alongside the original story.

Araki's career in full, from the portraits of the early 1960s to city scenes and tender tributes to his wife Araki is known the world over for his controversial erotic portraits of Japanese women, often bound using the kinbaku (Japanese bondage) technique. A unique figure in contemporary photography, he has always found creative inspiration in his daily existence, without making any distinction between his personal life and public 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 Subway of Love, a large collection of images taken in the Tokyo subway between 1963 and 1972, the year he also made Autumn in Tokyo, which recounts the autumn he spent wandering through the city in the twilight hours. These are followed by Sentimental Night in Kyoto, less known than the famous Sentimental Journey, both tributes to his wife, Yoko; Balcony of Love, Death Reality, Tokyo Diary from 2017, and one of his latest collections, Araki's Paradise from 2019. Born in Tokyo in 1940, Nobuyoshi Araki worked at 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 everyday life and architectural photography. He has published around 400 books, shown in many international exhibitions and his work is part of important collections worldwide. Araki lives and works in Tokyo.

This retrospective pays tribute to a truly distinctive photographer. With an academic training in photography and a professional background in advertising, Nobuyoshi Araki's subject matter is wide-ranging and incredibly diverse. Blending the careful composition of traditional Japanese culture with his own frenetic energy, Araki's work is compelling and controversial. Many of his works are erotically charged, yet, with a true artist's sensibility he brings something original to each composition. Undoubtedly one of the most prolific artists of any age, this portfolio challenges our most fundamental assumptions.

Arguably Japan's greatest living photographer and the author of over 425 books to date, Nobuyoshi Araki (born 1940) is internationally known for his erotic images of tied-up, beautiful nude women. It Was Once a Paradise presents Araki's most recent photographic series, 40 diptychs that offer a meditation on sex and grief. Each diptych couples a new color photograph of a semi-nude woman in bondage with a black-and-white still life from his personal diary, a somber image taken on his Tokyo balcony: the site of his former private paradise haunted by his deceased wife Yoko and his cat Chiro. Nostalgic ruins contrast with erotic hope, forming a contrast that is echoed in the packaging of the book, which has been designed to be read in either direction, and comes with a choice of two different dust jackets.

A young woman with her legs spread wide; buttoned-up dressed workers on a city street. Contrasting photos like these of intensely private scenes, and snapshots of nameless passers-by are Nobuyoshi Araki?s early commentary on the heterogeneity of Japanese society, calling the moral responsibility of its members into question. This book combines Araki?s Tokyo series from his early works with a selection of his recent Polaroid collages and newly developed slide shows?all of them exploring the contradictions between anonymity and intimacy, the public and private sphere, reality and dream. The legendary Araki is one of the most influential and widely discussed artists today, one who deals with nakedness, sexuality and the body in a radical and realistic way. Through an extreme emotional and physical closeness with his subjects, he becomes not only part of their lives but plays a central role in his own photos, thus transcending voyeurism. Together with Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Boris Mikhailov, Araki is considered one of the pioneers of intimate subjective photography. 00Exhibition: C/O Berlin, Germany (08.12.2018 - 03.03.2019).

A never-before-published collection of beautiful, arresting photographs from Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki

"Polarnography is a collection of 100 previously unpublished Polaroid pictures by Nobuyoshi Araki in 2016, in which portraits of women and expanses of sky are given equal space, their matching being never random. The controversial nudes of Japanese women bound with the kinbaku technique made him famous all over the world, just as his visceral love for the city of Tokyo, celebrated in many of his photography series and publications - from Tokyo Lucky Hole to Tokyo Diary, Tokyo Novel or Suicide in Tokyo. Women and sky not only share the traditional Polaroid format but complement one another, both in forms and colours: 100 combinations for 100 unique, previously unpublished and unrepeatable works. The 100 Polaroids by the Japanese master are reproduced in facsimile and gathered in a box which is, in turn, the facsimile of the one that contained the original photographs. The rhetorical composition between Polaroid and Pornography obviously lies at the heart of the title Polarnography."--Container box