Interview: Nobuyoshi Araki

Interview by Dan Abbe. Portraits by Tom Fraud

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI: What kind of questions will you be asking? There’s nothing really to ask, is there? Because my photos are pretty chatty. I’m not joking! They’re just the same as talking to me. If I was going to put it in a cool-sounding way, it’s like they translate my subjects as they really are. So, there’s really nothing to talk about!

DAN ABBE: Do you look at the internet much?

ARAKI: No, I don’t have it. I don’t even own a mobile phone. Nothing like that. I don’t like being shot with a digital camera, especially a really good one. It’s too good, you know? I feel like digital cameras miss what’s most important, emotion and wetness. These things get lost in digital photography.

I’d like to ask you about your recent exhibit at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, "Ojo Shashu: Photography for the Afterlife."

The museum tried to make it seem like I was dead. For me, putting something together always means pulling it apart. When I first started, I thought that photographs should be shown in books, not in museums. At that time, I thought that museums were like graveyards, at least for photography. This exhibit was good. Presenting my works in an exhibit like that instead of through a photo book, I feel like I was able to express myself even better.

I try to switch things up to make it look as rough around the edges as possible. You know those people who pay really careful attention to the way their works are exhibited? Like, some photographers focus on the layout too much. That’s wrong. It should just be slapped together.

Every time you produce something new, you do it under the name Araki, which means that the bar is always set high.

I’ve decided that I must do something different every time. If I don’t keep transforming, I’ll just become a master. It’s no good being a maestro. I always want to work as if I’m a novice. I never want to reproduce or reshoot anything I’ve already done.

Is the sky similar as a subject in that it’s different every time?

Yes. To me, that’s why it’s "heavenly." There are no two skies that look the same. I will exhibit "Eastern Sky" at Shiseido Gallery. I’ve been shooting the sky every morning for nearly three years.

What’s the difference between the eastern and western skies?

Ah. It’s very chatty, you know, the western sky. A real loudmouth. In the olden days, it was considered to be the Pure Land. It’s where the sun sets, and when it does, it’s quite dramatic. I think life’s the same way too.

You’ve said that your photographs are all about yourself, but I think that March 11 has become a surprisingly big theme for you.

It’s influenced me, yes — but it’s more like I’ve had no choice but to be influenced. It’s probably the influence closest to me personally. But it was its own expression. Photographers, you know, aren’t people who express things. It’s the world that does the expressing. Time, too.

Something I like about your work is that it’s extremely pure, but it’s not naïve.

With Chiro, if you look at those photographs you can see that her feelings towards me were much stronger than my feelings towards her. I did not respond enough to her love. Her love was deeper than mine. The photographs make this clear. Look at her final portrait, when she gazed at me. I just feel that my love was weak. That’s why the photographs of Chiro are good.

Tom Fraud with Nobuyoshi Araki — Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Tokyo, Japan