PHOTO:Nobuyoshi Araki
In Nobuyoshi Araki’s images, Kaori appears in a variety of poses. Effortlessly, she displays an astonishing range of emotions – brashly self-confident and strong, baffled, insecure and mysterious. We begin to wonder whether Kaori is merely a willing subject? Is Araki really just the director and the voyeur? The guises change, and then change again. The roles are continually reversed. Who is really in control?
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Kamel Mennour Archive
Since their meeting in 2001, Kaori has appeared in thousands of photographs. In image after image, like a Japanese Scheherazade, this Tōkyō muse seems to be reconciling to life a man wounded by the death of his beloved wife Yōko. Yōko was the heroine of Araki’s “Sentimental Journey” in 1971, where Araki, his camera became an eye, caressed her from every angle. She was also the heroine of the The photographs are printed both in stark black-and-white and in lush colour. More recently, Araki has been adding hand-painted elements to some of these portraits. The effect is a Kaori captured by a rainbow. In his notorious bondage photographs, Araki shows women bound by tight ropes, trussed-up and helpless, often dangling precariously above the floor. “It’s not a punishment. It’s an expression of affection”, says Araki. “In Japan, it’s called kinbaku and it’s not the same thing as the Western notion of bondage. For me, when the girl is tied up, she gets more sexy, more beautiful”. His hand-painted photographs of Kaori show her imprisoned by waves of paint instead, tossed around naked in a swirling maelstrom of colour. In many images, Kaori wear’s a traditional kimono, partly open to reveal her pale skin in contrast with the boldly patterned fabric. The stylisation echoes the graphic art of erotic 19th Century Japanese wood-block prints. At the same time, Araki nods to the high brow with the low brow. The elabo-rate, symbolic poses of Kabuki theatre and Noh drama, clash with the trash culture of cheap sex and Godzilla. With a knowing glance, Kaori clasps plastic dinosaurs in her hands. Reclining provocatively on a bed, the toy monster peeks into the folds in her kimono. His work stands as a significiant series of single moments that are a silent testimony to private worlds traditionally secreted away from public gaze. When placed in the context of Araki’s entire body of work, it illustrates most vividly the vicarious line between cultural acceptability and cultural reality. Sometimes he plays along with the trials of censorship and his burgeoning reputation as “the hair photographer” by scratching his negatives before printing them, or applying black paint directly to his imagery, covering the vaginas of his models.
Info: Galerie kamel mennour, 47 rue Saint-André des Arts, Paris, Duration: 22/6-23/7/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.kamelmennour.com
