Honestly part of the reason posts here have been somewhat sparse over the past several months is due to the sheer excellence of two Japanese photo centered blogs- Street Level Japan and Microcord. Bookmark and check them out. But I digress.
In October of 2011 Microcord reported on the first of a two part exhibition of work by Nobuyoshi Araki, a post which he titled Araki Scrap. This is my reply- a short report on the second half.
The show is called: Nobuyoshi Araki: People, City
The venue is a subsidiary (?) of the Setagaya Art Museum, a smallish place called the Miyamoto Saburō kinen bijutsukan (宮本三郎記念美術館) in a west Tokyo neighborhood near Jiyugaoka station. (In case you haven’t already, it would be best at this point to read his original article before proceeding with this one since his explanation of the museum and its acquisition of this work can’t be improved on.)
The first exhibition centered on the people of Tokyo. The second focuses on the city itself.
Upon paying your 200 yen entry fee, this is what you get:
1. Two levels of large horizontal monochrome 16×20 prints from Tokyo Story (1993).
2. Two levels of large vertical monochrome 16×20 prints from Towards Winter. Tokyo: a City Heading for Death
3. Four levels of less large color prints (11×14) from Tokyo Biyori (1993). This is not to be confused with the Takenaka Naoto directed/starred, Araki inspired/affiliated motion picture from 1997.
4. Three very large scrapbooks of large contrasty photographs, two from Araki’s series Zoo, and one from Subway, both created in 1966. Each scrapbook lies open enclosed in a cabinet. Each series has a video monitor showing the full content of a scrapbook as a digital slideshow presentation. Curiously, while the images were shot in a vertical format the orientation for both monitors is the typical horizontal one. This leaves two large black bars on either side of the centered image which in theory could have been used to show the pictures almost life-size had the curators choose to simply rotate the monitors 90 degrees either direction in their wall mounts to match the direction of the digital files. Maybe someone couldn’t find a screwdriver.
The prints in this exhibition are gorgeous- but those in the top rows are a good 7 feet off the ground, maybe higher. All are mounted to large wooden-framed felt covered boards with (typical for an Araki exhibition) clear push pins. A layer of thin acrylic sheet material is stretched over the frames to protect the prints. These boards are hung one atop the other. This is due to physics and geometry- there’s only so much wall space for so many prints. But did the top row of Tokyo Biyori color prints need to be put so near the ceiling?
Unfortunately step ladders are not provided. But for the digital monitor work, chairs and benches are.
The monochrome prints are from these two books:
Neither is available in the gift shop (one postcard rack near the ticket window) since both have been out of print for almost 20 years. That said, both are mainstays of any used photobook store in Tokyo and relatively cheap considering their overall visual impact and importance in Araki’s artistic output. Many critics (and the photographer himself) have discussed Araki’s photography as capturing the flux of Eros and Thantos. Granted, the Eros-centric books sell a lot more copies and have given Araki renown abroad but these two dark books are just as important, if not a lot more interesting in the overall scope of his published work. Even though both books feature pictures that keep me from looking through them on the train (cough cough) this exhibition is one for photography fans of any age or constitution. That means no naked ladies.
The reproduction of the photographs from Tokyo Biyori are, as photographs, less impressive in the book as they are actual prints. On the other hand, considering the content that they follow in the book- photocopies of Araki and his wife Yoko’s diary and daily planners before her death, the book has the chance to create a different kind of response in the viewer than anything you might feel in a gallery squinting upwards while standing on your tiptoes among strangers and security cameras.
The thing about the prints on the walls is this- all are available to be seen in several of Araki’s photobooks*. The two series from 1966 shown on the monitors are less represented, at least in their full forms. At the risk of reaching unnecessary levels of hyperbole, both sets feature as good of Street Photographs as you’ll ever see by any photographer, anywhere. With the enormous tomes next to you while sitting before the monitors watching the images pass one can really get a feel for the amount of energy that their creation entailed. Large (Possibly A2 sized) scrapbooks chock full of large prints don’t just happen by accident. And the fact that the content of the images is just as cheeky as the existance of comically large books is fantastic. These pictures deserve to be the subject of a chunky and faithfully reproduced photobook- why they haven’t, I have no idea. If anyone could get such a book made it would have be Araki.
All in all, this is an interesting little exhibition that is well worth 200 yen and an an hour of your time some afternoon. The show is up until March 20th, 2011. The Tokyo Art Beat entry is here.
*Speaking of Araki photobooks, I’m quite looking forward to visiting the Araki Photobook exhibition in Izu sometime between March and July of this year.
