Misty Media Sex Blog

September 27th 2005, 18:50 Jeff Sela

The Barbican will be showing an exhibition of the work of Nobuyoshi Araki, the great Japanese photographer. While he has photographed just about everything, he is most well known for his kinky erotic photographs. The gallery advertises his show as follows:

One of the most radical and controversial photographers of our time, Nobuyoshi Araki documents social taboos surrounding sexuality and death. Encompassing contemporary Japanese sub-culture, from poetic scenes of old Tokyo, to the dark side of urban life and eroticised female bodies in a variety of fantasy settings.

This is the first major show of Araki in London.

If that hasn't got you interested, then Joanna Pitman provides some of the gory details in the Times Online:

Let's deal with the sex bit first. Nobuyoshi Araki, Japan's most fanatically popular photographer, has made a name for himself in the West for tying up seminaked Japanese women in ropes, suspending them from the ceiling of his studio and then taking their portraits. Sometimes he photographs them in the gorgeous, loosely flapping folds of silk kimonos with a plastic lizard or perhaps an iguanodon creeping silently up their exposed thighs. The kinkiest—though this is debatable—is the series depicting a schoolgirl lying across a table, her knickers abandoned, a schoolboy and strawberry jam. Araki's take on sex is rather more than a glimpse of stocking.

I'm fascinated to know what's going on with the jam.

A few of Araki's nudes can be seen in this online gallery.

The show, Araki: Self•Life•Death, will be open from October 6th 2005 to January 22nd 2006 at the Barbican Art Gallery. Tickets are £6–8.