Seen: Negaeropolis Uganbochi
Who: Nobuyoshi Araki
Where: Rathole Gallery
When: September 26 – October 27, 2015 (12:00 - 20:00 closed on Mondays)
A continuation of Araki’s recent de-construction of photography Negaeropolis (Nega(tive) Ero(tic)-opolis) is recent work exhibited as a negative image- whereas his May 2015 show at Taka-Ishii gallery had negatives flipped physically, for these pictures he inverted color itself.
The second half of the show, Uganbochi, is comprised of large gelatin prints taken with a lens which Araki destroyed with a hammer- the shattered front element of his lens renders a large out-of-focus shape in the center of each image-as these images were taken from a taxi window as it passes Aoyama Cemetery, on either side of the blurred form one can make out tombstones and skyscrapers echoing one another.
You can read the official press release for this show in English here.
Interestingly, the two streams of images are intertwined by the inclusion of a shot of Araki’s Pentax LX with a shattered lens in the orangeish rows of the Negaeropolis pictures. (Sidenote- the LX does not, to my knowledge, have a digital databack accessory I suspect that the black and white images were taken with his Pentax MZ-S or Pentax MZ-3)