Galerie Daniel Templon is proud to announce an exhibition of works by the star of Japanese photography, Nobuyoshi Araki. At almost 70 years old, one of the most controversial Japanese artists presents a recent series of his celebrated photographs of young women tied up in the Shibari tradition, the erotic art of bondage.

Nobuyoshi Araki got his start in photography in the 1960s. Liberated of all taboo, the artist’s work took on quasi-obsessive themes: Tokyo, sex, and death. During a period when notions of femininity and sexuality were undergoing radical changes in Japanese society, he placed young women in positions of total submission. Beyond the complexity of the art of bondage, these photographs bear witness to the imprisonment of conventional mentalities, the complexity of the Japanese erotic tradition of Shibari, and a biographical reference to Nobuyoshi Araki’s first model, his wife Yoko, who died prematurely.

Gijs Van Tuyl, director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, describes Araki’s art of photography as a kind of ritual dance with the model during which a passionate duel takes place between the two protagonists. As the artist confirms, “I have always considered the photo shoot as a real body to body. It is a physical relationship between a man and a woman, like a romantic relationship.”

Nobuyoshi Araki’s photographs have been exhibited around the world, notably at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam in 1993, at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 1995, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 1999, and at the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul in 2002. , at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2005, at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2006, at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in 2008. His work is present in numerous international collections including the LACMA in Los Angeles, the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris , the Fotomuseum in Winterthur or the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.