Nobuyoshi Araki

Each book in this series brings together the best work of the world's greatest photographers in an attractive format and at an easily affordable price.

565 pages : 35 cm

On the occasion of its 30th anniversary in 2014, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain asked the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki to take a photograph every day, that would then be published weekly on its website in the shape of a slide show. Getting caught in the game, Araki took more than one picture a day from March to May 2014, producing 1,250 colour photographs featuring views of Tokyo, portraits of young women, sensual still-lifes, or shots taken at restaurants or in a small bar in the district of Kabuki-cho, one of his favourite spots. The Fondation Cartier collated all the images into one book, Hi-Nikki (Non-Diary Diary), offering a sumptuous showcase of this rich digital project and inviting the reader to dive into the daily life of a prolific artist. Nobuyoshi Araki (b. Tokyo, 1940) invented the genre of the false photographic journal in 1980. Araki takes his inspiration in the history of his country, his daily life and Japanese eroticism. Situated somewhere on the border between autobiography and the diary, his work features spontaneous pictures of astaged situations.

About This Book Tracing Nobuyoshi Araki’s career, this volume comprises a collection of emblematic photographs (one per day), a new series of nudes and elegant female portraits and a number of "stories" set in traditional Japan. Alongside these serial works are portraits and street photographs taken in the 1960s and 1970s. With these works Araki records Japanese society during its period of intense economic growth. His new flower compositions and the classic bondage series are also included, which are responsible for making him famous throughout the world. His recent productions will be given broad exposure in the Tokyo Diary 2003–2007 series. About the Author Nobuyoshi Araki (born in Minowa, Tokyo in 1940) worked as an in-house photographer at an advertising agency before leaving to concentrate on his own work in 1972. His subject matter is Tokyo and the people who live there. His work can be seen as a detailed diary of his life, or a catalog of things that catch his visual interest. Araki lives and works in Tokyo.

"I want to capture the joys of life. Not"AIDS" or "cancer" or "suffering" but joy. Closing my eyes to those realities, I want to bubble over with pleasure in these pictures. I know that the minute you let go, death comes creeping up from behind. But I want to have a ball anyway. That's exactly what I thought it would be like to work wiht Nan Goldin. Not to depict death." Nobuyoshi Araki