Erotos

Erotos
Araki
1993
Libro Port Publishing
100pp.

design by Seiichi Suzuki
printed in Japan

This is probably my favorite photobook of Araki's hundreds that I've come across. In it, he crystallizes a life-long preoccupation with sex, love, passion, pain, and death. Araki asserts that these "poles" of emotion and experience aren't so different and in fact go hand-in-hand. Coming to terms with these complex and intertwined relationships of life and death, love and loss, will help us enjoy and cope with these enigmatic and integral experiences of the human condition.

To achieve these highly visceral images with clear influence stemming from the Provoke generation of Japanese photographers, Araki employs a ring flash and macro lens in order to photograph his subjects as intimately as possible. He frames the quotidian—fruit, flowers, plumbing fixtures—as provocative and suggestive motifs juxtaposed against the naked body. Traditional hierarchies are flattened in Araki's masterful pacing and arrangement of images. A spoiled fruit, blossoming flower, or running faucet is no uglier or more beautiful than an embracing couple or woman contorted in ecstasy. This book is a celebration of living life with  vivid intensity through an acute understanding of our own emotions and motivations.

Japan: A Self-Portrait

Japan: A Self-Portrait
Shoji Yamagishi
1979
International Center of Photography
144pp.

design by Arnold Skolnick
printed in New York

This book is based on the exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York in April/May 1979. It presents works by Japanese photographers of the seventies that depict the realities of postwar Japan and beyond from their unique perspectives. With introduction by Taeko Tomioka and foreword by Shoji Yamagishi. Photographers’ biographies are provided.

One fascinating element of this book’s design which is immediately apparent is the distribution of the photographic plates throughout the book. Unlike traditional organizational structures where the plates are grouped in one section and the literature another, the “exhibition” of the various photographer’s works begins literally on the recto of the very first page and their haphazard distribution continues throughout, even on the title page and back cover.