After getting to know the manager of the Leica shop in Ginza this year I was able to end up with an invitation to the Nobuyoshi Araki exhibition opening reception.
The only other time that I have been in the same room with Araki was at the Lee Friedlander panel discussion at Rathole Gallery a few years back. No still photograph of this man does justice to the experience of watching him move and talk and point and joke and whatever else it is a human could possibly do in the same two seconds. He moves about a crowded and narrow room (like the gallery tonight) and in an almost supernatural fashion, people part and spread as he turns and moves from one point to the next. When he turns directly to you when giving a loudly jovial monologue on photographic theory (or dirty pun, often simultaneously) all you might be able to think is how thankful you are he is wearing sunglasses to make bearable the intensity of his gaze.
All the while flashes are going off left and right- – one of which accidentally lit the picture above.
Then suddenly he left- and everyone collectively sighs from slight exhaustion.
Despite not being sure if he would be at the venue I brought along my treasured copy of “Yoko, my Love” and a silver paint marker hoping that he’d use one to sign the other. He and everyone around him seemed to be quite surprised to see this particular book and making full use of the page he left this:
Silver was a good choice.
