The Langhans Gallery Prague

Born 1940 in Tokyo, Araki is the most famous contemporary Japanese photographer. Langhans Gallery presented for the first time in the Czech Republic a cross-section of his life’s work, incl. the famou

The exhibition, conceived by the curator Zdenek Felix, was organized in collaboration with the Bob van Orsouw Gallery, Zurich.

Since his first solo-exhibition in 1965 his work, depicting public and private life in Tokyo in a highly original and often controversial manner, Araki has been shown all over the world.

In the early 1990s, Araki’s photographic work attracted the attention of the European and American art scene. His first big solo-exhibition outside Japan followed in 1992-95, touring Austria, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Finland, England and Switzerland with great success. Araki’s work was first shown in the United States at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York in 1994.

His art is largely about human beings, their dreams and desires, and takes a profound interest in everyday life and the undisclosed. It also explores Tokyo, charting through photography what drives and troubles its population to reflect Araki’s profoundly sensual and immediate relationship with the Japanese metropolis.  Numerous collections of Araki’s work bear testimony to his photographic obsessions: “Private Tokyo” (1976), “Tokyo Blues” (1977), “Tokyo Elegy” (1981), “Tokyo Story” (1989) or “Tokyo Fine Day” (1993).

Photographing subjects as diverse as Tokyo street scenes, nudes, flowers, still lives, and clouds, Araki’s work is diverse and prolific. His nudes have established his reputation way beyond Japan, or as the well known Japanese art critic Toshiharu Ho writes: “Araki’s experience and recollections, his sensitivity and sensuality all blur with city life. His photographic work arises from the vertiginous dynamics of life and death, of transformation and eroticism. While eluding our grasp, Araki’s singular work seeks not a passage to the outer world but penetrates our innermost emotions” (1997).

Reality and vision, Eros and Thanatos, human beings and their inner world – these are the coordinates of Nobuyashi Araki’s fascinating photographic work.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Langhans Gallery Prague publishedArakis first book in Czech. Its selection of 46 photographs corresponds with the works shown in the exhibition, accompanied by an informed essay by Zdenek Felix. (Nobuyoshi Araki – Tokyo Flowers, hardbound, 64 pp., in Czech and English.)

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