On November 14, 2025, I gave a lecture that was particularly close to my heart, “Erotisme, deuil et excès : représenter le Japon autrement dans l’œuvre photographique de Nobuyoshi Araki,” at Lycée Champollion in Grenoble, France.
The study day, Le Japon dans les arts et la littérature. Autour de la photographie de Michael Kenna, aimed to shed light on one of the major sources of inspiration in Kenna’s work: the representation of Japan. It offered intersecting perspectives on other artists in order to highlight the figurative complexity of the country.
Header image: Araki Nobuyoshi, Sentimental Journey, 1971, Collection MEP, Paris.
Reference for the presentation :
Jessica Ragazzini, « Erotisme, deuil et excès: représenter le Japon autrement dans l’oeuvre photographique de Nobuyoshi Araki » Paper presented at the study day Le Japon dans les arts et la littérature. Autour de la photographie de Michael Kenna, Université Grenoble Alpes and Lycée Champollion, Grenoble, France, November 14, 2025.
Abstract of the presentation : « Erotisme, deuil et excès: représenter le Japon autrement dans l’oeuvre photographique de Nobuyoshi Araki »
Nobuyoshi Araki is undoubtedly one of the most ambiguous Japanese photographers of the twentieth century. Through his intimate photographic narratives (Sentimental Journey, 1971 ; Winter Journey, 1991), his bondage series (Tokyo Lucky Hole, 1985 ; Erotos, 1993), hhis experimental collages, thousands of Polaroids, and self-published photobooks, Araki continually linked the image to the body, to eroticism, to loss, and to excess. Far from any documentary realism or neutral gaze upon Japan, he produced a body of work that is unsettling, playful, and deeply affective. How, then, can we understand that a corpus so centered on fantasy and individual subjectivity could nonetheless contribute to constructing an image of Japan that resonates with its traditions, social transformations, and contemporary tensions? This paradox — a form of hyper-intimacy that becomes a cultural space — was at the heart of this analysis, presented in dialogue with the photographic propositions of Michael Kenna.
A photographic focus on Japan
This presentation was anchored in current photographic events, following the exhibition Haikus d’argent, L’Asie photographiée par Michael Kenna at the Musée Guimet in the summer of 2025, and resonating with the exhibition POLARAKI – Mille polaroids d’Araki Nobuyoshi, also presented at the Musée Guimet from October 1, 2025, to January 12, 2026.