Nobuyoshi Araki

The Eye of Photography asked the galleries exhibiting at Photo London to each present five photographs to be purchased. Michael Hoppen Gallery presents a selection of prints by Sarah Moon, Sohei Nishino and Nobuyoshi Araki.

Michael Hoppen discusses his passion for erotic Japanese art...

"I am not a Shunga expert. I am a visual collector, I just know what I like."

Europes foremonst dealer in Japanese photography, Hoppen is a man with a taste for the exotic: a tireless champion of Nobuyoshi Araki's work, his personal favourites include the artist's contraversial kinbaku photographs, which depict the art of rope bondage.

"For Araki, it' not about the knot-tying, it's about the change in the flesh's colour!"

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No one’s done more to bring the Japanese bondage art form of kinbaku-bi - “the beauty of tight binding” - to the world’s attention than one-of-a-kind artist Nobuyoshi Araki. Apart from his photos of lush women like his muse Kaori tied and bound, sometimes hanging from the ceiling, he’s also known for snapping technicolour painted flowers and black-and-white Tokyo streets.

Araki's pictures of trussed-up women in various states of undress – currently on show in London – explore the hidden eroticism beneath Japan's polite society.

In 1992, when the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki presented a series of loud, intermittently shocking images at a gallery in Austria, the institution's female guards walked out. Araki's photographs were sexist, degrading, oppressively fetishistic, they argued; if the work was installed, they wouldn't be coming back.

Who? Last year, we considered the highly charged kinbaku (Japanese bondage) works of photographer and provocateur Nobuyoshi Araki– as published in a deluxe edition by Taschen. This year, the Michael Hoppen Contemporary, as part of its ongoing exploration of important Japanese photography, will offer visitors the chance to view a number of such images in the flesh (pun intended), alongside a broader range of Araki’s work.

Rope may be a humble device, but it is the erotic power that photographer Nobuyoshi Araki employs when tying together his female subjects that really ignites his highly sexual work. Kinbaku-bi translates to ‘the beauty of tight binding’, a concept the photographer uses in his controversial Kinbaku series.

Michael Hoppen Contemporary’s on-going exploration of important Japanese photography will reach a controversial high on May 2 when the gallery unveils an exhibition of work by Nobuyoshi Araki.

Araki, whose major themes are sex, death and the more subversive side of the contemporary Tokyo scene, has made a career out of challenging the social mores of his home country and in this exhibition he pushes the boundaries even further, presenting a provocative body of work celebrating the Japanese art of bondage. Or kinbaku as it is known in Japan.

Michael Hoppen Contemporary is delighted to announce a new show of work by the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.

In continuing our exploration and presentation of important Japanese photography, Michael Hoppen Gallery will this year stage major solo shows of two of its grand masters: Nobuyoshi Araki and later in the year, Miyako Ishiuchi. Each an artist with a unique vision and aesthetic, both producing highly charged work in examining the sensitive subjects of that society.

Araki is the king of provocation. In a very particular - and arguably peculiar - way he has made the subject his own. And here we celebrate those images from his most controversial body of work, Kinbaku, the Japanese art of bondage. Kinbaku-bi meaning literally the beauty of tight binding. And yes, though strong and offensive to some, disturbing to others, the pictures are often beautiful.

Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has caused some stirs in his notoriously conservative home country, where more than a few choice words – misogynist, pornographer, pervert, monster - have been used to describe him. Now the most provocative volume of his oeuvre, ‘Kinbaku’, is the focus of a solo exhibition at London's Michael Hoppen Gallery.

The Michael Hoppen gallery is about to host an exhibition of the scandalous Nobuyoshi Araki. Indeed, from May 2nd to June 8th, London’s cultural space will present the Nippon photographer’s Kinbaku series (1980-2000). 

Araki’s practice is diverse to say the least, reflecting numerous aspects of Japanese culture and society, from the ordinary to the bizarre. This show falls into the latter category, and consists of some of his most controversial work, a series of photographs of women, many dressed (or undressed) in traditional costume, tied up in Japanese rope bondage. Interspersed amongst these are variations on this theme, several women untied and some more significant digressions, including polaroids of rather suggestive looking flowers and a close-up of a woman’s face on a highly pixelated television screen.