Araki Faces Mortality & Photography at Anton Kern Gallery

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 06 July 2015 19:33

Written by Renzo Adler

Nobuyoshi Araki, Untitled (Eros Diary), 2015, Courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York.

Infamous for his sexually explicit and debauched works, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has laughed in the face of taboos. Araki has captured toys, fruits, city streets, red light district denizens, and celebrities like Lady Gaga, while creating skillfully composed and playful works that make him, arguably, Japan’s most well known photographer. But a new exhibition at the Anton Kern Gallery (532 West 20th Street  New York, NY) focuses on the fragility of life and Araki’s own mortality. Eros Diary runs from July 9th through August 7, 2015, and is comprised of 77 black and white photographs that show a more introspective side to Araki.

The photos touch on issues like the marriage to his wife Yoko, who passed away in 1990, the loss of sight in his right eye, and his recent battle with prostate cancer. These photos look within Araki’s own thoughts on his mortality, than the world of carnality that his photos usually go to.

In a 1995 interview, Araki said that “Photography was destined to be involved with death. Reality is in color, but at its beginnings photography always discolored reality and turned it into black and white. Color is life, black and white is death. A ghost was hiding in the invention of photography.”

This exhibition will be Araki facing that ghost head on.

To learn more, go to: http://www.antonkerngallery.com/

ARAKI Eros Diary
July 9 - August 7, 2015

Anton Kern Gallery
532 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

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