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Araki: Shinjuku is summer. Just the other day, the two of us were walking around, shooting nothing in particular but each and every shot was good. ‘Course there was that high being with you, but even just walking around is fine, no need for masterpieces. Whatever appeared before our eyes was a picture. Everything makes photos for us.

Moriyama: (chuckles) Yeah, I guess you can say that.

Araki: That being how I do things, there are no “great pictures” but, “Hey, what’s this?” Just look! (laughs)

Moriyama: Who needs “masterpieces”?

—-

excerpt from Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki in Conversation (Sept. 28th 2004)

MORIYAMA - SHINJUKU - ARAKI (Heibonsha, 2005)

original photograph by Sakiko Nomura

emptinessphotography

shihlun

張才 CHANG Tsai

全國運動會

1950s.

shihlun

写真100年日本人による写真表現の歴史展 / 日本写真家協会

A Century of Photography: History of Japanese Photographic Expression in the Past 100 Years Exhibition / The Japan Professional Photographers Society

(1968)

valerian

Nobuyoshi Araki

photo by Sakiko Nomura

shihlun

Setsuko Hara is photographing a policeman with her Rolleiflex camera during her visit to Berlin, Nazi Germany, 1937. She was there to promote the film Atarashiki Tsuchi / Die Tochter des Samurai / Daughter of the Samurai (1937) - a co-production between Japan and Nazi Germany.

Photographer: Werner Cohnitz

taishou-kun

Yamamoto Shōun 山本昇雲 (1870-1965)

Ohanashi おはなし (Story) - Japan - 1911

Source digitalmuseum.rekibun.or.jp

taishou-kun

Modern girl no susume モダンガールのスヽメ book cover - Asai Kayo 淺井カヨ - Japan - 2016

Source Twitter @yayoi_yumeji

valerian

-Sixteen Araki Books from 2016-

9. 写狂老人A 76齢 / Photo-Mad Old Man A 76th Birthday (Taka Ishii Gallery)

In a way this is the phonebook-thick version of Tombeau Tokyo- it is sized close to the 8x10 prints which made up the exhibition of these pictures at Taka Ishii in May of 2016. The density of the book is similar to how experiencing the show itself forced the viewer into an odd web of intertwined visual threads of surreal humor, eroticism, and decay.

This book takes the themes of Tombeau Tokyo and then blasts ahead. Interspersed with photos of KaoRi are images of Tokyo in a state of de-and-re-construction along with a bizarre miniature world of broken dolls and figures and flowers which Araki calls paradise. Paradise here is reigned by absurdity in a soft mist of death.

Available at Shashasha here.