Araki in London

"In tokyo he is high-fived by men in the street and mobbed by young women clamoring to be photographed by him (a Japanese game show even offered that privilege as a prize); he receives letters from women telling him, what they are prepared to do in his pictures, out grossing each another in what appears to be a frenzy of exhibitionism."

It's easy to recognise who David Chandler is talking about in his review in the November issue of photoworks. There's an exhibition of Araki's images at the Barbican and I'm wondering if the gallery's not just another of the clamoring masses desiring to host or be hosted by this man's manic produce. I'm not against him totally or 'for' him for that matter - just annoyed.

There was a time when I would pick up one of his books, but absorbing the sheer number of his images is like trying to view a landscape through a shattered pane, or trying to stick your hand into a shoal of fish in the hopes of catching one. And all his women wrapped in ropes, I'm sick of it really. The analysis below by David Chandler says it nicely:

"But the addict is ultimately a bore; too immersed in himself, too tiring to be with, too reliant on the delusions and compliance of others around them. Most great art comes from a singular and obsessive attention to things, it is borne of an urgent desire. Yet great art also opens out from that point. Spending time with Araki's work is, for me, like being confined to an addiction, like being dragged on an interminable journey of the self with photography as a desperate and continual means of personal re-fabrication and with photographs as a gaudy and pale replacements of life" - David Chandler

P.S - "Arguably Japan's greatest living photographer"? Huuum..?

Submitted by Philip Cartland on 27 December 2005 - 12:00am.