Along with Daido Moriyama and Eikoh Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Araki is one of Japan’s most respected photographers, and whilst his oveure is wide, including his celebrated street photography, it is his ongoing series of bondage photographs, for which he is best known. This body of work – which has been included in many of his 230 plus, books so far published – also divides opinion amongst his audience, with many undecided as to whether Araki is a highly original artist, or more simply a pornographer?

Araki meets Hokusai, was exhibited at the prestigious Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover in 2008, the exhibition and accompanying book, places 100 of these bondage images, many of which have not been exhibited before, in context with the small and delicate woodcuts from the great artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose best know works include, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, an icon of Japanese art history.

On the surface the classical Hokusai woodcuts depict the rich diversity of the Japanese culture during the Edo period (1603-1868), yet look closer, and one begins to encounter frequent references to both sexual encounters and erotic desire, some of these reference points are subtle, whilst others are far more blatant and graphical.

Once we understand these references in Japanese art history, the photographs that we may once have viewed as shocking, are now viewed in a new contextual light, where we begin to understand in greater depth, the spiritual affinity, that Araki is exploring in his own work, and the connections that these photographs and Araki, have to the Japan of his ancestors, the 18th and 19th century art of Shunga, and of course Hokusai.

Araki meets Hokusai is published by Kehrer Verlag.