Araki at the Barbican

Friday 9th November - to London for the self.life.death, the exhibition of Nobuyoshi Araki's photographs at the Barbican Gallery. Araki is the controversial Japanese photographer whose work I featured in my recent article Fumio Yasuda's erotic improvisations. What a stunning exhibition. Either Araki's reputation as a pornographer is overstated by the media, or this large exhibition of his work has been very carefully chosen to present a 'balanced' picture. Yes, sex is a definite thread, but isn't that true of life as a whole?

The sheer virtuosity, creativity and technical standards are overwhelming. Araki's photographic diaries remind me that photo blogs are nothing new, but also drive home the point that most are nothing more than nice pictures - whereas Araki produces stunning pictures. This exhibition confirms what a powerful and underrated art form photography is. I don't know if self.life.death is moving elsewhere when it closes in London on January 22nd 2006, but if you have the chance to see this exhibition jump at it.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credit - Fuyu-Koi (Love in winter), 1998 by Nobuyoshi Araki linked from
Artfacts.net
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to My friends pictured within ....

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